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“BL 240 .D33 1925 
Darrow, Floyd L. 1880- 
Through science to God 





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THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


htips://archive.org/details/throughsciencetoO0darr 








N CARINA 


THE NEBULA I] 


giant suns. 


ev 


1 for many 


This vast whirlpool of nebular chaos contains sufficient materia 


AQ) Vi hing 
<a 1p 
NO’ 14 1995 






-arareunuwnon véglash Yonie 


Author of 
MASTERS OF SCIENCE AND INVENTION 


INDIANAPOLIS 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


CopyriaHt, 1925 
By THE Bopsps-MERRILL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


PRINTED AND BOUND 
BY BRAUNWORTH & CO., INC. 
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 


INTRODUCTION 


Turoven Science To Gop is an attempt to 
clarify the confused thought of scores of troubled 
souls concerning spiritual problems of fundamental 
significance to this life and the next. It tries to 
relate the everlasting spiritual truths of sacred lit- 
erature to the changing forms of modern thought. 
Recognizing that the revolutionizing discoveries of 
science are as surely revelations of the Divine In- 
manence as ever were the words of seer or prophet, 
it seeks to harmonize the old and the new, to retain 
the rich heritage of the past and assimilate it to the 
never-ceasing accumulations of fresh knowledge. 
The notion that the divine revelations of the eternal 
truths of the universe ever ceased is utterly false. 
That God revealed all that is to be known about the 
origin and development of the universe to infant 
peoples at the dawn of history is an idea so absurd 
that we stand amazed at its credence by any in this 
marvelous age of super-science. The spectacle of 
grave legislators sitting in solemn council at the 
close of the first quarter of this twentieth century of 
enlightenment to pass laws prohibiting the spread of 
new truth and tending toward the stagnation of 
thought and the fossilization of error constitutes a 
situation which verges upon the ridiculous. It harks 
back to the days of Galileo and the Inquisition. 
Within ten years we shall wonder that it ever could 
have happened. 


INTRODUCTION 


And still the new knowledge of evolution has 
proved disquieting to a host of anxious souls. They 
do not see their way to a belief in it and a reten- 
tion of their religious faith. That evolution is 
simply God’s way of working is not yet under- 
stood. They have not caught a vision of creation 
as a process of eternity, never ceasing, always 
rising through larger cycles to higher levels and 
nobler achievements. Many do not know what evo- 
lution means. They do not understand that it in no 
sense deprives them of their God or denies their 
divine origin. It is a chief purpose of this book to 
dispel the fogs of misconception and popular preju- 
dice which temporarily veil the truth regarding this 
fundamental law of everlasting growth and prog- 
ress. It is hoped that its thoughtful reading will 
deepen Christian faith and bring peace of spirit to 
many a troubled mind. That the teaching of science 
gives the strongest grounds for belief in God and 
immortality is the burden of its message. 

The literal interpretation of Scripture and the 
man-made theology of the Middle Ages no longer 
harmonize with this new world of scientific dis- 
covery and ever-enlarging revelations of eternal 
truth. It is time the intellectual leaders of the world 
lay aside their groundless fears that the truth about 
the Bible and its origin will jeopardize the spiritual 
welfare of the race. The undeniable facts regarding 
the evolution of our sacred literature should be a 
part of the common information of people every- 
where. Nothing can be gained by pretentions to 
belief in the discredited forms of religious thought. 


INTRODUCTION 


In the firm conviction that the spiritual life of 
people will be immeasurably deepened by a proper 
understanding of these new view-points, a frank 
discussion of the Bible in the light of recent scholar- 
ship is included in these pages. 

The underlying purpose of this book is religious. 
There is no conflict between spiritual and scientific 
truths. They arise from a common source. They 
strike their roots deep into the same subsoil of 
fundamental realities. Belief in one form of truth 
does not discredit faith in the other. And yet the 
great body of scientific facts, susceptible of exact 
verification, can not be overthrown by appeals to 
the literal interpretation of a sacred literature, 
formulated in an age of scientific ignorance and 
superstition. Such attempts are worse than useless. 
They only discredit the cause which they are 
intended to support. Many leaders of the church, 
apparently oblivious to the tremendous erisis which 
confronts them, fatuously seek to retain the husks 
of an outgrown traditionalism, rather than to 
square their creeds with the rapidly accumulating 
body of new truths. And it is undeniably true that 
many scientists still cling to the crass materialism 
of a generation ago. In the hope that protest 
against these false attitudes on the part of intel- 
lectual leaders will hasten the coming of that day 
when Christian prophet and scientist alike may 
unite in a common reverence for the revelations of 
the Divine Immanence, in whatever form they may 
appear, this book has been prepared. 

FLoyp L, Darrow 


aden 


vot 
yy 





CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
I From Nesuta to Inuasitep Puanet. . 13 


Il From MytxH anp LEGEND TO THE REIGN OF 


TRA Wee ONG A ee Sn Be Menlo whaa ta Manley, St) Uy Utah ene 
TY Tar Meanina or Eivonution  . 2.5.) 52 
HVE PELE REVISE ORV MEANBC Oo Min tpoute urine cath arn ALON) 

V Tse Recorp or Man’s Divinity . . .. 145 


View GopvAND dM MORTALELY Qi tad iene teeta LOS 


VE VScrmNGE/AND THE CHURCH 3 48 4 00 Ww. 196 
Ve RRAVLIR ACT Bac. Nihon unc nrir ieea ip mul gh ana int Then LG 
PPX VL ODER: MIRACLES! Myvi ins ie su. veal Gint hin ea) DOO 
xX THe Bucasoo or Naturan Law . . . 250 
XI Atoms, MoLEcuLEs anp Eiuectrons . . 263 
XII Revativiry anp SprriruaL Reauitizs . . 276 
AIT] THe Farrus of THE ScIENTISTS . . . 287 


LENDER on: Via RE Laan AMM CHEN ot aa( pL 





THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 





THROUGH SCIENCE 
TO GOD 


CHAPTER I 
From Nesuua to INHABITED PLANET 


From nebula to inhabited planet,—how glibly we 
say it. And yet how impossible it is even to 
comprehend what untold billions of years lie 
between us and that unthinkably remote past when 
all that we see about us and all that exists in the 
central sun and in the other members of our solar 
system were ‘‘without form and void,’’ diffused 
possibly in some by-path of the heavens as a thin 
vaporous fire mist, or nebula. For it is thought 
that in the infinite sweep of Time, suns and solar 
systems are subject to the common law of growth. 
They take their beginnings in the primeval chaos of 
disintegrated matter, evolve to maturity, and then 
decay, possibly again being resolved into the raw 
material of infant worlds, only to pass in never- 
ending succession through cycles of birth and growth 
and decline. How it staggers thought and bewilders 
the imagination for us ephemeral creatures of but 
a fraction of a cosmic moment to attempt to visualize 

13 


14 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


this drama of eternity,—perpetual change, ceaseless 
ebb and flow, never a flawless product, youth, 
maturity and old age, always rising spiral-like to 
larger cycles and higher levels, leading sometime, 
somewhere to organic life, as possibly but a passing 
phase of the process, and the insoluble mystery of 
the whither of it all! What lies back of the atoms, 
molecules and electrons that constitute the nebula? 
Are we able anywhere to detect a Divine Purpose? 
Does our little system of life and cosmic matter 
seem to be the product of a Master Mind? Or, are 
we and all else in the universe mere puppets of 
chance? Are we simply a part of a colossal 
mechanism of perpetual motion, requiring neither 
creator nor guide? And are there other worlds 
than ours,—myriads of them possibly? Does the 
universe mayhap swarm with life, even as a drop of 
water from a stagnant pool teems with microscopic 
organisms? Can we imagine the limits of creation, 
bounds beyond which there is no star or nebula or 
life or motion? These are some of the soul- 
perplexing questions to which we citizens of the 
universe would fain have answers, It may be that 
along some path of inquiry lies an inkling of the 
truth. Let us see. 

Should we sweep the heavens with the telescope 
and possibly call to our aid celestial photography, 
our search would be rewarded with the discovery 
of hundreds of thousands of luminous cloud-like 
wisps of matter, dotting the night-time skies in 
abundant profusion. These are the nebule. They 
cover vast areas of the celestial spaces. The nebula 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 15 


in the constellation Lyra would hold twenty-five 
thousand solar systems equal in size to our own. 
So immense are some that it would require many 
years for a ray of light, journeying at the rate of one 
hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second, to pass 
from side to side. The quantity of material in the 
vast whirlpool in Orion is sufficient to give birth to 
thousands of giant suns. The great nebula in 
Andromeda, the largest as seen from the earth and 
also possibly one of the nearest, is still so far away 
that some astronomers estimate its distance at a 
half million light years. That is, it would require 
light, at its ‘‘stage-coach’’ speed, a half million 
years to travel from that patch of luminous vapor 
to the earth. 

The spectroscope, a marvelous instrument for 
the revelation of the secrets of the heavens, tells us 
that these nebule consist of incandescent gases in 
highly rarefied form, so exceedingly rare that the 
gases remaining in a vacuum tube are dense in 
comparison. But whence the source of the hght? 
In those vacuous spaces, it is intensely cold, 
probably little, if any, above absolute zero, the 
coldest possible temperature. This light, then, can 
not be due to heat. And yet, the luminosity of these 
attenuated gases is maintained, apparently un- 
diminished, from decade to decade and century to 
century. It is altogether likely that this condition 
must be attributed to an electrical disturbance, 
similar to that of the Aurora Borealis. But, be that 
as it may, these nebule are among the most 
numerous objects of the heavens. Many of them 


16 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


are spiral, gigantic whirlpools of cosmic action in 
which other suns and worlds innumerable may be in 
the process of formation. At least that is the view 
which has been held by many astronomers, from 
Laplace to the present day. 

Let us examine this Nebular Hypothesis a little 
more in detail. Its purpose is to account for the 
origin of a solar system like our own. Somewhere, 
somehow, sometime our little family group of cen- 
tral sun and attendant bodies took its beginning. 
What is the explanation? How did it happen and 
how has the matter which composes them evolved to 
its present form? The theory of Laplace, a brilliant 
French mathematician and astronomer of something 
more than a century ago, is briefly this: A nebula 
of glowing gas rotating on an axis and subject to 
the law of gravitation, as all matter is, would 
through inconceivably long periods of time con- 
tract with the evolution of heat and in so doing 
assume a flattened disk-like form. The diminishing 
size of the nebula would, as a direct result of 
physical laws, increase the rate of rotation until 
the centrifugal force equaled the gravitational pull 
toward the center of the mass. When this stage 
was reached, a large ring of rotating matter would 
be left behind, which, under the influence of the 
same laws of motion and gravitation, would be 
gathered into a planet revolving about the parent 
nucleus. This in turn, too, would throw off rings 
to form satellites. And then again, slowly and 
without haste, through countless eons, as befits the 
cosmic processes of eternity, other rings would be 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 17 


separated from the central mass to form additional 
planets. When stability was finally reached, the 
product of this stupendous piece of creative 
evolution would be a solar system with a highly 
heated central sun and a revolving group of plane- 
tary attendants. As a by-product, out of the 
surplus material of this world building, swarms of 
meteoric matter would be left to revolve in orbits of 
their own about the central luminary. And comets, 
those erratic members of the solar family about 
which is associated so much of mystery but which 
were shown by Newton to obey the law of gravi- 
tation, at one or more points of the evolution were 
hurled forth on those far-flung paths which take 
them to such remote portions of the vast unknown, 
only to return at regular intervals to salute the ma- 
jestic ruler of their journeyings. Slowly our earth, 
one of the lesser planets, cooled down sufficiently to 
permit the vapor in its atmosphere to condense and 
those elemental forces of heat and rain and wind and 
moving water to begin the infinitely slow process of 
building the continents and fashioning them for the 
abode of living things. 

Although there are difficulties in the way of the 
complete acceptance of this theory, it is understand- 
able that a solar system could be evolved in 
accordance with its principles. Electrons, atoms, 
molecules and then a luminous rotating nebula, a 
whirlpool of meteoric matter, followed by a central 
disk sloughing off gigantic rings to form a plan- 
etary group, and at length a cooling earth evolving 
throughout long ages into a suitable habitat for life 


18 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


and eventually for the home of man,—this seems 
to have been the possible order of creation. The 
large numbers of spiral nebule which dot the heav- 
ens, indicate that this description possesses a high 
degree of approximation to the truth. 

Other explanations have been advanced, 
particularly the Planetesimal Theory of Professors 
Chamberlain and Moulton, of Chicago University, 
which builds up the planets and their satellites from 
meteoric dust rotating in an immense spiral whirl- 
pool. These bodies have not been hurled off from 
the central nucleus, but instead represent small 
knots of infalling material drawn together by the 
force of gravitation. This meteoric matter was orig- 
inally cold, and the heat of the planets has been 
developed, like that of the sun, by gravitational 
compression. The atmosphere and the water in the 
oceans were squeezed out of the interior of the 
earth during an immense period of growth and 
contraction. In some respects this theory fits the 
facts of observation better than does the older one 
of Laplace. 

But, although it is still uncertain, and possibly 
always will be, as to the exact method by which our 
solar system has evolved, astronomers have no 
doubt that it took its beginning in some primitive 
nebula, at an inconceivably remote moment of the 
infinite past, and that it is leisurely taking its 
course through the successive stages of youth, 
maturity and old age. Abundant evidence of such 
eycles of change is written large in the heavens. 
Spectroscopic analysis reveals suns in every stage 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 19 


of evolution from those still wrapped in nebulous 
matter and the giant stars of youth to the feebly 
flickered red dwarfs of old age and the cold dark 
bodies which have lived their lives and are speeding 
onward through space, awaiting the chance of some 
celestial catastrophe to resolve themselves once 
more into the primeval chaos of nebulous matter, 
only to begin anew the birth of other suns and 
worlds. In the vast sweep of such a cosmic cycle, 
may there not be at many points organic evolution 
with the unfolding of life in all its manifold forms, 
the growth and decay of cities and civilizations, 
human souls groping after God and immortality, 
and mayhap still higher and nobler phases of ex- 
istence than any we have as yet experienced? 

As to other worlds than ours, it would, indeed, 
be most unreasonable to assume that our little earth 
is the only spot in the universe suitable for the 
origin and evolution of life. Of the hundreds of 
millions of stars, which exist in space, thousands 
are known to be in the same state of evolution as is 
our sun. And our solar system is thought by some 
astronomers to be at maturity and by others just 
approaching old age, which, for aught we know, may 
be the harvest time of a star period. The heat 
of the sun is not increasing. It may be on the wane. 
Not that such diminution would be appreciable with- 
in the brief span of recorded history, for life con- 
ditions will doubtless be maintained here for many 
millions of years yet, but, so far as cosmic time goes, 
we are more than likely in the second half of our 
eycle. This is inferred from the character of the 


20 THROUGH SCIENCE TQ GoD 


sun’s light. The ruler of our skies has traveled an 
inconceivably long way since the youthful period 
when it was a reddish giant, and it still has an im- 
mensely long future, before it passes completely 
through the reddish dwarf stage and becomes a dark 
lifeless body. Now, is it not highly probable that in- 
numerable other suns in the same state of develop- 
ment as ours may have inhabited planets revolving 
about them,—scenes of life and death, struggle and 
triumph, sorrow and joy,—cosmic niches, as it were, 
in the infinite plan of creation? Of course, we can 
never know. But someway, it seems as though the 
universe would be out of tune if the earth were the 
only place where evolution has flowered into life. 
Similar paths of cosmic development must have led 
to like conditions of growth and fruitage. Implicit 
in the Infinite Purpose which embraces all creation 
must be life, and life in abundance. Just as every 
region of the earth, the environment of which per- 
mits, teems with life, so would it seem that every sun 
at the proper season must become the center of 
numerous populations, as naturally as harvest time 
brings the ripened grain, or the spring-time soil 
sends violets up and paints them blue. Surely, life 
must be one of the supreme achievements of crea- 
tion and our little earth but a single member of 
God’s great republic of worlds. 

And what of the bounds of space? In spite of 
Einstein, we can not conceive of the beginnings or 
the ends of space,—of a place where there is no 
space. Space must be infinite in extent. Hach new 
telescope, more powerful than the last, pushes back 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 21 


the frontiers of our universe by billions of miles 
and adds many millions of suns to our stellar 
population. And we say our universe, because 
many of the foremost astronomers believe that our 
immense family of stars is only one of many similar 
collections, the members of each such group con- 
stituting a cosmic unit and moving in accordance 
with the law of gravitation. It is entirely possible 
that these universes may be as humerous in space as 
a whole as are the stars in our own cosmic system. 
Giant suns, larger even than Betelgeuse, itself more 
than three hundred times as large as our own, may 
people space in the utmost profusion. What a stu- 
pendous place creation is! And how even the most 
momentous events of our little planet are dwarfed 
into insignificance in comparison with the vastness 
of it all! Yet may it not be true that the supreme 
purpose of creation everywhere is the production of 
life and the evolution of immortal souls? Some- 
where, sometime we may understand it all, for there 
can be little doubt that the life which manifests in 
each individual will continue to evolve through end- 
less time, just as in all probability do the matter 
and energy in the solar system of which we are a 
part. At least such a view is far and away the most 
probable one possible to take. | 


FASHIONING THE PLANET FOR LIFE 


After our earth had become a full-fledged mem- 
ber of the solar system, the next stage in the process 
of evolution was to prepare its surface for the 
abiding-place of living things. How did it happen? 


22 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Whether the origin of the earth be in accordance 
with the Nebular Hypothesis or the Planetesimal, or 
with some other as yet unformulated, the first chap- 
ter of the geologic story begins with the foundation 
erust whose heaving surface, refashioned by the ele- 
mental forces of volcanic heat, and ocean, wind and 
running water, was to serve as nature’s theater of 
action. But there was no haste. With an infinity 
of time at her command, Nature began the incon- 
ceivably slow changes which were to lead to 
continents, eventually to be clothed with vegetation 
and replete with animal life. The rocks* were at 
first molten, seething and boiling and doubtless for 
ages passing alternately from lava to solid crust 
and back again. In this boiling process, the lighter 
materials rose to the top, while the heavier ones 
sank to form the denser core. Very gradually the 
surface cooled and at the same time the mass of the 
earth shrank in size until its diameter became what 
it is to-day, about seven thousand nine hundred 
miles. At length a temperature was reached low 
enough to permit the vast quantities of water 
vapor contained in the atmosphere to condense to 
form the ocean. For a long time, only here and 
there protruding masses of rock indicated the 
embryonic beginnings of continents. The ocean was 
shallow, no great depressions having been formed. 
Owing to the prevailing high temperature, 
prodigious quantities of water vapor passed into 
the clouds, only to condense and fall back as rain, 
part of it to gather in rivers upon the roeky nuclei 
of the continents and rushing seaward to bear down 


*According to the Nebular Hypothesis. 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 23 


to the shallow coastal waters sediment derived from 
the rocks over which they passed. Thus were the 
first sedimentary rocks laid down. The winds, 
lashing the sea with the fury of the storm, drove the 
waves against the shore-lines, grinding the rocks 
into pebbles, sand and mud, which the sorting 
action of water deposited in additional layers of 
rock. And so the continents grew. 

But the crust of the earth was still far from 
stable. Its heaving surface rose and fell like the 
billows of a troubled sea, here an elevation, there a 
subsidence. As deeper and deeper warps occurred, 
the waters withdrew into them, leaving constantly 
larger areas of rock exposed to the action of wind 
and running water. And these two processes have 
continued to the present day, although more 
extensively in past geologic time than in recent. 
More than once dry land has disappeared below the 
surface of the sea, and ocean beds have been raised 
to become dry land. Continents and islands now 
separated by oceans have repeatedly been joined by 
bridges of land. It is not improbable that the fabled 
continent of Atlantis existed at one time somewhere 
in the north Atlantic Ocean. Abandoned beaches, 
now stranded far inland, tell of the locations of early 
geologic seas. Ancient river terraces give evidence 
of shifting physical features of the land and changes 
of elevation. But these changes have been ex- 
ceedingly slow, vast periods of time being required 
for their execution. 

And with it all mountains grew, sometimes 
gigantic folds thrust heavenward by the attempts 


24 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


of the cold crust to fit itself to a constantly cooling 
and shrinking interior, sometimes a series of deep 
furrows eroded in the rocks through the agency of 
running water, and this interplay of titanic forces 
was frequently accompanied by the music of 
volcanic action, lava flows and earthquake catas- 
trophes. ‘The tremendous pressures and high 
temperatures developed in these folding and 
crumpling processes of mountain growth often 
resulted in changes in the structure of the rocks 
themselves. 

But no sooner do mountains begin to grow than 
the eternal forces of destruction set out to annihilate 
them. Their bare and unprotected surfaces are 
splintered by the lightning, carved into fantastic 
shapes by wind and driven sand, deeply eroded by 
the torrential rush of running water, and burst 
asunder by the irresistible force of frost and ice, The 
debris of these ceaseless processes of decay, borne 
seaward by the rivers, finds a lodging place in 
valley, plain and delta. And thus deep soils come 
to cover the lowlands. 

With this perpetual shifting of mountain, sea 
and continent, too, came climatic changes of vast 
proportions, one and the same region having been 
repeatedly the scene of tropic heat and Arctie cold. 
Abundant evidence of these conditions is written 
large in the record of the rocks. 

And so this drama of geologic forces held the 
stage for countless eons before those peculiar 
conditions necessary for the production of life 
emerged upon the earth. But at length they came, 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 25 


and when they did, the simplest forms of living 
organisms appeared as naturally as the flower un- 
folds from the bud. We may never be able to 
duplicate the exact conditions required for this 
strategic turning-point in the evolution of our 
planet, but we may be perfectly certain that they 
had their origin in the Divine Immanence of all 
creation. Only recently Doctor John W. Gruner, of 
the department of geology of the University of 
Minnesota, announced that he had found evidences 
of blue-green algew, very primitive microscopic 
plants, in rocks belonging to the Archwan Age, the 
oldest of the geologic ages. Doctor Charles D. 
Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington, had already discovered organic 
remains in rocks of almost equal age. Certain it 
is that when the earth had cooled sufficiently to 
support life, life appeared and organic evolution 
began. The tale of the rock record, as revealed in 
its fossil populations, will be told in another 
chapter. 

From nebula to inhabited planet has become an 
accomplished fact, not once only, but possibly 
millions of times at innumerable points of space. 
Ephemeral creatures of but a small portion of a 
cosmic instant, we can no more, in our present state 
of evolution, fathom the mystery of it all than can 
an insect in a tropic forest appreciate the vastness 
of his surroundings. Still, by the contemplation of 
the awe-inspiring grandeur of our universe and the 
sublime order of creation, we emancipate our earth- 
bound souls and grow in mental and moral stature, 


26 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 


The age of the earth has been a bone of con- 
tention, both in theology and science, for centuries. 
But inasmuch as theology has no sources’ of in- 
formation other than legendary statements having 
their origin in the folklore of primitive peoples, we 
must turn to science for an answer. 

A century ago, Lyell, the great Scotch geologist, 
announced that the same slowly acting forces which 
are reshaping the physical features of mother earth 
to-day have wrought all the vast changes of the 
past, from the time our planet was a molten* sphere 
to the present moment. Estimates by many 
scientists, based upon the known rates of change in 
various parts of the world, have placed the age of 
the earth at not less than one hundred millions of 
years. And this conclusion does not take into 
account the immeasurably long periods of time 
comprised in the nebular period which preceded the 
coming into play of present geologic forces. In com- 
parison with these, one hundred million years would 
comprise scarcely a tick of the cosmic time clock. 

Still biologists were not satisfied. One hundred 
millions of years were all too short for the 
stupendous processes of organic evolution which 
the fossil record of the rocks disclosed. Nothing 
less than several hundred millions would suffice 
for the unimaginably slow changes which have oc- 
curred from the time the most primitive forms of 
life appeared to the highly organized fauna and 


*It should be noted that according to Planetesimal Hypothesis 
the early condition of the earth was not molten. 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET lef 


flora of to-day. And so, many eminent biologists 
have extended the life-span of the earth to at least 
a billion years. 

The astronomers and the physicists, too, have 
made estimates, based upon entirely different 
sources of information. They ask the question: 
How long has the radiation of light and heat from 
our sun been sufficient to maintain life upon this 
globe? For we must understand that the sun is our 
sole source of energy. It is rays of the sun which 
evaporate the water from the ocean to supply the 
rainfall for our lakes and rivers and waterfalls. It 
is the energy of the sunlight which builds starch 
and cellulose in the chemical laboratory of a green 
leaf. And it was this same energy of the sun which 
in a remote geologic time grew the forests for the 
production of coal. When the solar fires grow cold, 
_ the life cycle of our planet will have run its course. 
It is estimated that the earth intercepts solar energy 
at the stupendous rate of two hundred and thirty 
trillion horse-power. And yet that is but one two- 
billionth of the total amount radiated into space by 
our central luminary, the bulk of which, according 
to our ideas, is wasted. What maintains these 
fires, and how long will they continue? To com- 
pensate for this prodigious loss, there must be 
some source of supply, else the sun would have 
grown cold ages ago. What is it? 

The early theories, that the heat of the sun is 
maintained by ordinary combustion or that the sun 
is simply cooling off and thus radiating into space 
the heat obtained in its evolution from primeval 
chaos, have been shown to be utterly untenable. 


28 PHROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


And so also has the idea that the solar energy is 
generated by the impact of meteors falling from 
great distances into the sun passed into the discard. 
The total mass of meteors is simply insufficient for 
any such enormous demands. For many years the 
most plausible explanation seemed to be the 
generation of heat through the contraction of the 
mass of the sun itself. Following the methods 
first employed by Helmholtz and using the most 
recent data regarding the sun’s rate of radiation, 
mass and size, it has been shown that a contraction 
in the sun’s radius of one hundred and twenty feet 
a year would supply a quantity of heat as great as 
the sun now radiates annually. And such a diminu- 
tion of the sun’s diameter could not be detected, even 
with the most powerful telescopes, for ten thousand 
years. Estimates of the crustal age of the earth, 
based upon the sun’s rate of radiation, have varied 
all the way from Lord Kelvin’s figures of one 
hundred million years down to twenty-five millions 
in more recent times. 

But science seldom stands still. Researches in 
the wonderful field of radioactivity have increased 
the estimated age of the earth enormously. The 
biologist, who was trying to scrape along on the 
niggardly hundred million years doled out to him 
by his brother scientists, may now have almost un- 
limited periods of time for his processes of 
evolution. Without here going into the details of 
the methods employed, let it be said that Professor 
A. C. Lane, of Tufts College, chairman of the com- 
mittee appointed by the National Research Council 


FEOM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET 29 


to estimate the age of the earth by observations of 
the rate of atomic disintegration, as revealed by the 
relative amounts of radioactive elements in the 
earth’s crust and their decomposition products, 
announces an age of a billion and a quarter years. 
Doctor H. V. Ellsworth, of the Canadian Geological 
Survey, from independent researches in the same 
field, confirms these figures. 

It is highly probable, too, that the heat of the 
sun is maintained to a large degree by the de- 
composition of radioactive elements. Spectroscopic 
analysis of the sun’s atmosphere by Sir Norman 
Lockyer revealed the presence of helium there in 
large quantities long before it was found on the 
earth, and helium is one of the chief disintegration 
products of radium. In this disintegration, enor- 
mous quantities of heat are liberated, and it may 
well be that in these reservoirs of sub-atomic 
energy science has at last solved the riddle of the 
celestial fires. | 

Certain it is that the earth is old, vastly older 
than the earlier estimates of science would lead us 
to believe. Whatever may be our ideas regarding 
the spiritual and theistic aspects of the universe, 
we must concede the immense antiquity of man’s 
earthly abode. 


IS THERE PURPOSE IN CREATION ? 


Has this stupendous process of cosmic action, 
this eternal pageant of creation been the result of 
mere chance and accident? Do we behold only a 
self-running mechanism of colossal proportions? 


30 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Do we see nothing but matter, force and energy? 
Can we imagine that our solar system, whatever the 
process or method, has come about without a 
directing agency? Has there been no thought or 
purpose or intelligence? These are questions which 
have puzzled many minds in many times. 

But what do we see? A cosmic order of perfect 
law and harmony. ‘‘The heavens are crystallized 
mathematics.’’ The members of our solar system 
move in their orbits with unerring precision. The 
universal law of gravitation demonstrates the sway 
of a force of such dizzy vastness as to bewilder 
thought in the attempt to grasp it. The atoms, too, 
are known to be marvelous systems of planetary 
units, moving in accordance with laws as unvarying 
as those which prevail in cosmic space. Chemical 
changes are always in exact numerical proportions. 
The molecules decompose and the atoms recombine 
in obedience to definite and undeviating laws. Some 
power has founded these systems of law and order 
and maintains them with unwearying and un- 
alterable exactness. What is it,—intelligent pur- 
pose or chance? Self-directing reason or blind 
necessity? There are no other alternatives. Shall 
we assume that a power which is neither rational 
nor intelligent has by mere accident produced a 
world order of marvelous complexity and perfect 
harmony, one which is wholly intelligible to the 
human understanding, a product of its own creation, 
but is utterly unintelligible to itself? Can we 
subscribe to the doctrine that an intelligible universe 
can proceed from a non-intelligent source? 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET rast 


But more significant than all this, the whole 
trend of evolution from nebula to mature planet 
seems to look forward to the coming of life. Here, 
unquestionably, we seem to see purpose. Not once 
in a million times would it be possible for a system 
of nature exactly adapted to the production and 
maintenance of life to evolve by mere chance. 
Whence this unique and remarkable fitness? An 
atmosphere of precisely the correct proportions of 
essential elements, an ocean of wonderfully 
moderating influence upon temperature and climate 
and a natural habitat for many forms of animal life, 
elements and compounds whose physical and 
chemical properties serve the necessities of man- 
kind and promote the growth of industries and 
civilizations, vast storehouses of natural wealth, 
seemingly inexhaustible supplies of energy, the 
rather narrow range of temperature within which 
living organisms can exist, productive soils, 
mechanical laws amenable to human intelligence,— 
all these and much more point to the advent of life 
as the supreme achievement in the evolution of our 
planet. And such a forward-looking bent running 
back through countless eons implies purpose. We 
can not escape it. Back of our world, and the 
universe too, must stand the thought and purpose of 
an intelligent creator, a Being whose life is the im- 
manent source of all created things. Any other 
view is utterly unthinkable. It leads only to mental 
chaos. 

The fact that the world-ground, or fundamental 
reality back of creation acts as though it had 


32 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


purposes must prove that it has them and that a 
Supreme Intelligence informs and directs the 
manifestation of all natural occurrences. That is 
the law of science. Why do we assume an ether? 
Simply because it is unthinkable that light and heat 
energy can travel ninety-three millions of miles 
from the sun to the earth without something in 
which to travel. Until the coming of Hinstein 
certain natural phenomena seemed utterly unintel- 
ligible without the supposition of this intangible 
medium. But whether it be the old reliable ether or 
some other hypothetical connecting bond, the mind 
will never rest content with a mere vacuum. What- 
ever is necessary to the mind’s understanding of 
the facts, the imperial scientist will invoke. Why 
do we believe that the fossil record of the rocks un- 
folds the past history of organic life upon this 
planet? Because there is no other rational ex- 
planation. Why do we say that certain rocks were 
once molten and that others were formed by the 
deposit of sediments? Because their structures 
clearly disclose such an origin. The scientist 
believes implicitly in the marvelous subatomic 
worlds of electrons, and yet they are utterly beyond 
his most penetrating gaze. True, the rational 
necessity for their existence rests upon a wealth of 
experimental evidence. Nevertheless, they have 
sprung into being in response to our attempts to in- 
terpret the facts of nature. Very much of natural 
phenomena is just as unintelligible without 
assuming Divine Purpose as is the world of atoms 
without electrons. God is as much a rational 


FROM NEBULA TO INHABITED PLANET on 


necessity to the understanding of the universe, and 
of our planet in particular, as are the hypotheses of 
the scientist to the interpretation of his facts. Still, 
it is not to be inferred that the idea of God is simply 
an hypothesis. To many of the most profound 
thinkers His existence is as axiomatic as that two 
and two are four. 


CHAPTER II 
From Myrxu anp LEGEND To THE REIGN oF Law 


Ler us transport ourselves backward for a little 
time to the early centuries of the Christian Mra and 
view the ancient world as it appeared to the simple 
folk of that comparatively recent period in the 
history of mankind. True, the seasons came and 
went then as now; the same ocean bathed the 
continents; the same heavens stretched their empy- 
rean canopy from horizon to horizon; the same 
heavenly host peopled the infinite depths of space; 
the earth was no larger then than now; it spun on its 
axis and whirled about the sun with the same un- 
erring precision of time and motion; the law of 
gravitation extended its sovereign sway as far as 
now; our solar system marched with the stars just 
as it does to-day; the more distant suns of the beau- 
tiful Milky Way were even then ‘‘at least a hundred 
thousand trillion miles away’’ from our little plan- 
etary group; the sunbeam, the measuring rod of the 
new heavens, traveling at the rate of one hundred 
eighty-six thousand miles a second, required, too, in 
that early day thousands of years to journey from 
farthest sun to farthest sun across our universe of 
stars; the atoms, molecules and electrons, imprison- 
ing a million hoary secrets, fairy-like spun and 

a4 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 35 


danced, even as they do in the scientist’s laboratory 
to-day; the story of the rocks, ages old, lay as an 
open book before any who perchance might under- 
stand its language; Nature held the same vast store- 
houses of latent treasure; the giant steam and the 
untamed lightning were eager then to become the 
burden-bearers of the race; this ancient world pos- 
sessed little to distinguish it in physical character- 
istics from the world to-day. But little did those 
youthful peoples know what vast unexplored spaces 
of land and sea and sky lay beyond their tiny 
horizon. Myth and legend were their source of 
knowledge. To their simple faith the little world of 
that day presented few problems. The mysteries 
of heaven and earth were far less obscure than they 
are to us, and chiefly, because they ‘‘knew’’ so much 
that is not so. But let us visit that ancient world 
and follow the crude thinking of those pioneers of 
‘“‘vesterday,’’ as it evolved through ever-increasing 
knowledge to constantly higher and more truthful 
conceptions both of God and man and of the uni- 
verse: of which we are a part. 

Could we wake up some morning in this little 
world of long ago, we should find it constructed 
in accordance with the legendary accounts of crea- 
tion originating in the gray mists of Chaldean, 
Hgyptian, Persian and other ancient civilizations. 
This crude cosmogony represented a curious blend- 
ing of common-sense notions and purely imaginative 
ideas. So far as the early Christians were con- 
cerned, it drew its warrant from a host of Biblical 
texts, founded in turn upon these primitive legends. 


36 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Crude products of ignorance and superstition, these 
theories of the universe are such as might be ex- 
pected from infant peoples making the first tiny 
explorations of the infinite depths of space. 

The Chaldean account pictures a flat earth rest- 
ing upon the ‘‘great waters’’ surrounding it and in 
whose depths are placed the foundations which sup- 
port the solid dome of the ‘‘firmament.’’?’ Within 
the earth is the realm of the dead, and above the 
firmament is first another ocean and then the in- 
terior of heaven. Through doors at the east and 
west points of the dome of the heavens the sun is 
admitted in the morning and makes his exit at night. 

The Egyptian notion was quite similar. To 
those simple folk, the earth was like a long flat 
table, carrying at its corners four pillars to support 
a huge firmament of metal, beyond which were the 
‘‘waters above the heavens.’’ In this dome, the 
stars were hung, great lights to illumine the earth, 
and through its windows water was occasionally let 
down as rain upon the land. 

With our present knowledge of the heavens, as 
revealed through the big telescopes, we smile at 
these primitive beliefs, and yet, in the face of the 
undoubted facts of scientific investigation to the 
contrary, many of us still cling to ideas of creation 
drawn from the same sources and equally prim- 
itive. With all our boasted learning, our thinking 
is often quite as crude as that of these ancient 
peoples. 

Gradually during the first centuries of the 
church, there evolved an orthodox theory of the 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 37 


universe. It was the product of many minds and 
grew out of various passages of Scripture. It never 
occurred to these people that the Bible is only a 
spiritual guide and not a text-book of science. Its 
poetic and figurative language was interpreted as 
literal truth. With all the facts of nature and the 
universe clearly revealed in Holy Writ, the pursuit 
of science was worse than useless. This prying into 
the secrets of God was blasphemous and iniquitous. 
It was much easier and far safer to construct a 
theory of the universe based on Scripture and 
imagination. 

Some of the Scriptural reférénees, such as the 
‘‘doors of heaven,’’ the ‘‘pillars of heaven,’’ the 
‘‘windows of heaven,’’ the ‘‘waters above the firm- 
ament,’’ the ‘‘corners of the earth,’’ the ‘‘founda- 
tions of the earth upon the waters,’’ and the ‘‘foun- 
tains of the great deep,’’ clearly betray their 
legendary origin, From the beautiful imagery of 
Isaiah: ‘‘It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the 
earth, . . . that stretcheth out the heavens as a 
curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell 
in,’’ came the idea of the early Church Fathers that 
the universe is like a house. The firmament is the 
ceiling and the earth the floor. A huge cistern con- 
tains the ‘‘waters above the firmament,’’ from which 
the Almighty and his angels let the water down upon 
the earth through the ‘‘windows of heaven.’’? In the 
morning they hang out the sun to rule the day, and 
at eventide they pull him behind a mountain or push 
him into a pit, while at the same time they hang out 
the stars and moon to rule the night. Beneath the 


38 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


floor of the earth and beyond the ‘‘great waters’’ 
surrounding the earth was hell. To the question, 
‘‘Why is the sun so red in the evening?’’ it was 
answered, ‘‘Because he looketh down upon hell.”’ 
To the great mass of the faithful, rooted and 
erounded in ignorance as they were, these ideas 
seemed like a direct revelation from on High. And 
in that golden age of fancy, hundreds of myths hav- 
ing this imaginative background as their source 
circulated freely among the people. The catching 
up of mortals into heaven and the descent and 
ascent of angels were common occurrences. ‘‘Signs 
and wonders’’ hung from the heavens, the hurling of 
thunderbolts, the blowing of mighty winds, the send- 
ing of fiery comets, and miraculous interventions of 
every sort grew into fixed articles of faith in that 
fertile soil of superstition. And for this conception 
of things theologians fought long and desperately. 
But the germ of truth was abroad in the world, 
and ultimately this elaborate work of the imagina- 
tion was bound to go. Seventeen centuries before 
the time of Copernicus, Aristarchus, the most 
notable astronomer of antiquity, had proposed a 
theory of our solar system differing but little from 
that of to-day. This imaginative Greek, and Py- 
thagoras before him, had taught that the earth is 
round long before the time of Christ. And the idea 
still lived. But the early Church Fathers opposed 
it strenuously. Even Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin 
and Zwingli, the foremost leaders of the Reforma- 
tion, regarded the belief as heretical. They were 
fettered to the legendary idea of a solid firmament 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 39 


separating the heavens from the earth. To them 
it seemed for long an essential item of Christian 
faith, just as to-day a belief in the letter-proof ac- 
curacy of the Story of Creation is held by some to 
be all important to the salvation of men. And yet 
here and there some enlightened Christian thinker 
gave his assent to the idea of the earth’s sphericity. 
The Scriptural utterances seeming to prove the flat- 
ness of the earth were disregarded. St. Augustine 
did not oppose the new view. Long before the 
Reformation, such authorities as Bede, Albert the 
Great, St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante had accepted 
it. But even after the idea had evolved into some- 
thing approaching the nature of a tolerated belief, 
the Almighty and a host of angels were regarded as 
the direct operators of earthly affairs, both physical 
and spiritual, Huge monsters blew the ‘‘four 
winds’’ of heaven constantly toward Jerusalem, 
and God held the earth suspended by a rope. 
Angels laboriously turned the earth on its axis by 
means of cranks placed at the poles. Guardian 
angels constantly supervised in a very intimate 
way the personal actions of men. 

Although the belief that the earth is round grad- 
ually grew in strength, another problem of stagger- 
ing proportions presented itself. If the earth is a 
sphere, how is it possible for men to live on its 
under side? One eminent churchman asked: ‘‘Is 
there any one so senseless as to believe that 
there are men whose footsteps are higher than their 
heads? . . . that the crops and trees grow down- 
ward? . . . that the rains and snow and hail fall 


40 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


upward toward the earth?. .. I am at a loss 
what to say of those who, when they have once 
erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend 
one vain thing by another.’’ 

And this was a very real problem. The church 
took it up, and the whole matter quickly passed from 
scientific speculation to the realm of theological 
dogma. <A host of Scriptural passages were mar- 
shaled in opposition. Salvation was held to be 
impossible to wilful believers in such a pernicious 
doctrine. St. Augustine thundered against it. The 
words of the Nineteenth Psalm: ‘‘Their line is gone 
out through all the earth, and their words to the end 
of the world,’’ were regarded as absolutely destruce- 
tive of this belief. It was urged that Christ could 
not have died for men on the opposite side of the 
earth and that at His second coming it would be im. 
possible for them to see Him descending through 
the air. All this and much more contributed to the 
mighty tempest created by those misguided leaders 
who chose to believe in the literal truth of every 
Biblical text. And yet their mistaken beliefs were 
no more absurd, nor nearly as much so, as are those 
of many in this enlightened age who still persist 
in regarding the poetry and legend of the Old Testa- 
ment as revealed truth in its most literal sense. 

But years passed by, and centuries came and 
went. ‘Then occurred two events which forever 
Silenced all opposition. Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica by sailing westward on the ‘‘great waters,’’ and 
Magellan circumnavigated the globe. Men living 
at the antipodes had actually been seen. In the fol- 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 41 


lowing years returning explorers and missionaries 
brought back confirmation in abundance. 

The storm had passed. So far as the earth was 
concerned, the primitive notions of its geography 
had gone. Our world had increased enormously 
in size, and men’s souls had expanded in equal 
measure. The conception of God had become a 
nobler one, and men’s minds had taken the first step 
in that process of intellectual expansion which was 
one day to encompass a universe of infinite propor- 
tions. In one respect, too, the literal interpretations 
of Biblical texts had received a severe shock. The 
tempest had raged for twelve centuries, but by the 
middle of the sixteenth the skies had cleared and 
the world was ready to face the next great struggle 
between dogmatic belief in the imaginative creations 
of a legendary past and the revelations of ad- 
vancing knowledge. 

Before we pass on to this conflict, however, we 
must note a theological reconstruction of the uni- 
verse which had been in progress for many cen- 
turies. It represented a unique blending of the 
ancient Ptolemaic theory of the solar system and 
the medieval interpretation of Scripture, together 
with the survival of certain Chaldean legends, In 
this universe building, too, the imaginative element 
did not cease to have full play. Instead of the flat 
plain and the solidly vaulted dome, the earth became 
an immense sphere located at the center of all the 
other heavenly bodies. Then, these gifted archi- 
tects surrounded the earth with ten transparent 
spheres, all but the last rotated by angels and the 


492 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


first eight carrying the planets and fixed stars. The 
tenth sphere, known as the empyrean, was immov- 
able and marked the boundary between creation and 
the great outer void of infinite space. There sat 
God, enthroned in a wondrous light, which no one 
eould enter, perpetually listening to the ‘‘music of 
the spheres,’’ as they forever turned in rhythmic 
motion about the earth, the center of all creation. 
A vast heavenly host, consisting of hierarchies of 
angels of many degrees and orders constantly 
waited upon the Almighty and acted as interme- 
diaries between Him and the earth. Within the 
earth was hell, the abode of Lucifer and the rebel- 
ious angels who with him had been driven from 
Heaven. These wicked angels were thought to be 
responsible for a deal of woe among the good 
angels and in the affairs of men. They caused 
storms and drought and ensnared men into ways 
of sin. Dante has immortalized this majestic con- 
ception for all time. Buttressed by many Scrip- 
tural texts and much theological reasoning, it pre- 
vailed for centuries, To cast doubt upon it was 
blasphemy. 


THE EARTH DETHRONED 


One evening, about the year 1610, at Padua, Italy, 
Galileo, even then world-renowned scientist and 
foremost apostle of truth, swept the heavens with 
his newly-invented ‘‘Optic Tube,’’ and, behold, the 
celestial spheres vanished as by the waving of a 
magic wand. The time-honored system of Ptolemy 
was in potential ruins, With this first sweep of his 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 43 


telescope, Galileo expanded the tiny world of the 
ancients to a universe of vast extent. Worlds with- 
out end sprang into view. Even with this simple 
instrument, he was amazed to discover that he could 
count ten times as many stars as were visible to the 
unaided eye. At a glance, he perceived that they 
are not all equidistant from the earth. Repeated 
observations from night to night disclosed phases 
of Venus, exactly similar to those of our moon. 
Thus was the belief of Copernicus that the planets 
are dark bodies shining by reflected light verified. 
The surface of the moon, shown to be scarred by 
rugged mountain ranges and pitted with volcanic 
craters, dissipated the Aristotelian idea that our 
satellite and the planets are perfectly smooth spher- 
ical bodies. Then, one evening Galileo turned his 
telescope upon the planet Jupiter, and a miniature 
solar system sprang into view. He watched these 
tiny ‘‘stars’’ from night to night, and quickly estab- 
lished their revolution about the parent planet. 
Indeed, here seemed a foreshadowing of the truth 
of the Copernican theory that the planets, of which 
the earth is one, revolve in immense orbits about 
the central sun. Pointing his magic instrument at 
the sun, he quickly discovered dark spots, seeming 
blemishes, upon the bright surface of the ruler of the 
daytime skies. Thus, sunspots, those gigantic whirl- 
pools of solar activity about which we still have 
much to learn, became a fact of astronomical dis- 
covery. Their movement under continued observa- 
tion proved the rotation of the sun itself. Under 
the uncanny vision of this simple prophet of the 


44 THROUGH SCIENOE TO GOD 


Italian hills, the beautiful Milky Way was resolved 
into myriads of faint stars at such immeasurable 
distances as to be utterly invisible to the naked eye. 
Great discoveries were these, more significant than 
the world had ever witnessed before. Under their 
influence men grew in mental stature. They repre- 
sented the first great step in the emancipation of 
mankind from intellectual bondage to the powers of 
ignorance and superstition. 

But what a wreck these discoveries made of the 
sacred system of the universe! Continued observa- 
tions from week to week and month to month proved 
that the planets do revolve about the sun, and not 
the sun, stars and other planets about the earth. 
Truly, the earth had been dethroned. It shrank to a 
relatively insubordinate place in the solar system 
and to insignificance in the vastness of the stellar 
world. The Copernican view of the heavens, which 
the great Polish astronomer had not dared to pub- 
lish for thirty years under fear of the Inquisition, 
was vindicated for all with eyes to see and faith to 
believe in these epoch-making revelations of science. 

As was to be expected, a theological storm of vast 
magnitude swept the earth. Intrenched ignorance 
was not easily to be routed from its stronghold. 
Reverence for the sacred past was stronger than the 
desire to know the truth. All the forces of the 
church, both Catholic and Protestant, were arrayed 
against Galileo. Martin Luther nearly a century be- 
fore had opposed the sacrilegious belief. Among 
other intemperate utterances, he said: ‘‘People 
gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 45 


show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the 
firmament, the sun and the moon, Whoever wishes 
to appear clever must devise some new system, 
which of all systems is of course the very best. This 
fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astron- 
omy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua 
commanded the sun to stand still, and not the 
earth.’?’ Melanchthon, associate of Luther in the 
Reformation, declared: ‘‘The eyes are witnesses 
that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four 
hours. But certain men, either from the love of 
novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have con- 
cluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that 
neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves... . 
Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert 
such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. 
It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth 
as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it.’’ Calvin, 
with the apparent finality of divine warrant, asked: 
‘Who will venture to place the authority of Coper- 
nicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’’ 

These outgivings of great men, blinded by 
religious zeal, sound strangely similar to the 
utterances of misguided modern prophets. The 
‘heresy’? of evolution to-day stands on precisely 
the same footing as the three-centuries old ‘‘irre- 
ligious’’ belief in the new heavens. The one ig as 
certain of victory as was the other, for no human 
agency can long withstand the irresistible forward 
sweep of God’s eternal truth. ‘‘Sound learning’’ 
and ‘‘safe science’’ can ultimately find no stamping- 
ground in clarified modern thinking. 


46 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


The discoveries of the great Florentine philoso- 
pher were held to contradict such Biblical passages 
as the sun ‘‘runneth about from one end of the 
heavens to the other’’; ‘‘the foundations of the earth 
are fixed so firm that they can not be moved’’; and 
the reference to the moon as ‘‘a great light.’? One 
said, ‘‘His discovery vitiates the whole Christian 
plan of salvation’’; another, ‘‘It casts suspicion on 
the doctrine of the incarnation’’; while others were 
alarmed because ‘‘It upsets the whole basis of the- 
ology. If the earth is a planet, and only one among 
several planets, it can not be that any such great 
things have been done specially for it as the Chris- 
tian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, 
since God makes nothing in vain, they must be in- 
habited; but how can their inhabitants be descended 
from Adam? How ean they trace back their origin 
to Noah’s ark? How can they have been redeemed 
by the Savior?’’ Absurd as these questions seem 
to us, they were very real then, just as the problems 
of evolution are to many honest souls to-day. But 
there is no shadow of doubt that, in the quite near 
future, both will be regarded in the same light. 

In vain did the spokesman of the Jesuits thunder 
that ‘‘The opinion of the earth’s motion is of all 
heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, 
the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth 
is thrice sacred; argument against the immortality 
of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarna- 
tion, should be tolerated sooner than an argument 
to prove that the earth moves.’’ How firmly myth 
and legend fettered the thinking of the time, the fol- 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND AT 


lowing statements from one of Galileo’s Catholic 
critics well illustrates: ‘‘ Animals, which move, have 
limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or mus- 
cles, therefore it does not move. It is angels who 
make Saturn, Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If 
the earth revolves, it must also have an angel in the 
center to set it in motion; but only devils live there; 
it would therefore be a devil who would impart 
motion to the earth.’’ 

How the aged Galileo, twice summoned before 
the Inquisition, was forced on bended knees under 
threat of personal torture to recant his belief in the 
movement of the earth, the world well knows. But 
no earthly tribunal could stay the triumph of his 
ideas. The truth was abroad. The tiny world of 
the ancients and the early church could no longer 
contain the thoughts of men. Galileo’s telescope had 
shattered it past the possibility of reconstruction. 
True, for a century after his death in 1642, Prot- 
estant theologians and benighted Catholie prelates 
sought to prove that the Copernican theory could 
not be reconciled with Scripture. But it was all 
utterly futile. The church was compelled to retreat; 
the mythical firmament of the ancients disappeared 
forever before the telescopic revelations of this sim- 
ple astronomer of Pisa, Padua and Florence. 

And what had been gained? The triumph of 
truth, deeper knowledge, keener insight, broader 
vistas for the soul, a universe of infinite spaces, a 
starry heaven of immeasurably greater majesty 
and beauty, tremendous growth in mental stature, a 
larger and nobler conception of God. 


48 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


THE EMERGENCE OF LAW 


But, though the new heavens had been estab- 
lished, there was as yet no reign of law. Here were 
majestic movements of the planets and their satel- 
lites, of the utmost precision and of immense sig- 
nificance, but no coherent system binding together 
the members of the solar family had been discov- 
ered. And then, as though directed by the hand of 
an unseen guide, Johann Kepler crystallized for all 
time this new knowledge by his discovery of the laws 
governing the planetary movements. His three 
laws, binding the solar system into a unit and elim- 
inating the element of caprice, placed the new 
fortress of astronomical science upon a secure foun- 
dation. To no purpose was he warned by the 
church ‘‘not to throw Christ’s kingdom into confu- 
sion with his silly fancies,’’ and ordered to ‘‘bring 
his theory of the world into harmony with Scrip- 
ture.’’? But the edifice, reared by Copernicus and 
Galileo and stabilized by Kepler, could not be thus 
easily overthrown. At last men’s eyes had been 
opened to the truth. Freed from the notion of an- 
gelic direction in the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, the idea of a reign of law began to take shape 
in the minds of men. Still, the capstone to the struc- 
ture was lacking. Something more was needed to 
give perfect harmony to this little group of cosmic 
units navigating the immeasurable spaces of the 
stellar sea. And, as all the world knows, this some- 
thing was soon supplied by Sir Isaac Newton in 
that incomparable expression of the Divine Imma- 
nence, the Universal Law of Gravitation. 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 49 


How Newton brought under the sway of this law 
not only the paths of moving bodies at the surface 
of the earth, but also the motions of the moon, the 
planets and their satellites, the comets and meteors, 
and even the rising and falling of the tides, con- 
stitutes one of the most significant chapters in the 
story of scientific achievement. Unless we except 
Hinstein’s discovery of relativity, it is beyond ques- 
tion the most masterly mathematical feat ever 
accomplished by the mind of man. When Newton 
had shown that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion 
could have been predicted as necessary corollaries 
of his all-embracing law, the fundamental signifi- 
eance of this revolutionizing discovery became 
apparent to all who had ears to hear and the will to 
understand. 

Still, the church did not welcome this emergence 
of law. This substitution of understandable law for 
divine intervention was held to detract from God’s 
power and to be derogatory of His Majesty. To 
these small-visioned leaders the discovery of natural 
laws was looked upon as a serious curtailing of 
God’s prerogatives. They could not see that back of 
them must be a Divine Lawgiver and that they lift 
to a loftier plane the majestic conception of His 
supremacy. And so Newton, like many other apos- 
tles of the truth before and since, was regarded as 
an enemy of God. He who had unlocked the very 
ante-room to the eternal mysteries of the universe 
was pilloried as an atheist. 

But the old heavens had gone. ‘‘The spacious 
firmament on high,’’ ‘‘the crystalline spheres,’’ 


50 THROUGH SOIKNOB TO GOD 


‘‘the windows of heaven,’’ ‘‘the waters above the 
firmament,’’ ‘‘signs and wonders,’’ the hierarchies 
of angels attendant upon the earth and the heav- 
ens,—all this and much more had vanished. Instead 
men saw the perfect reign of all-pervading law. 
When toward the middle of the last century, Nep- 
tune, the outermost member of our solar system, 
was added to the sisterhood of planets solely 
through the aid of Newton’s Law of Gravitation, the 
sovereign sway of this divine expression of God’s 
method of ordering the movements of the heavenly 
bodies became acknowledged of all men. 

And thus through the conquests of these great 
pioneers of scientific discovery, the religious ideals 
of men and their conception of God had been given 
truer and nobler meanings. Indeed, these paths of 
science had led to a deeper and more reverent 
knowledge of Him whose life is the soul of the uni- 
verse. In place of a sort of indefinitely magnified 
and glorified watchmaker, a mighty genius in cos- 
mic mechanics, who had manufactured a world and 
set it going, subject to miraculous intervention by 
himself and a host of celestial assistants, men began 
to catch a vision of the all-sustaining immanence of 
a Divine Guide,—always at work, always creating, 
always directing the destinies of men and events. 
liverywhere is ceaseless change. Nowhere is there 
perfect adjustment and harmony, always a constant 
becoming, a never-ceasing growth. The world is 
never finished, never a flawless work of art, but 
always striving toward perfection, taking its course, 
it may be, toward that ‘‘one far-off divine event 
toward which the whole creation moves.”’ 


FROM MYTH AND LEGEND 51 


And what a mighty universe had been unveiled! 
What stupendous spaces for the flights of fancy 
and the thoughts of men! Star clusters so far away 
that light traveling at the slow speed of one hundred 
and eighty-six thousand miles a second, requires 
two hundred and twenty thousand years to reach 
this planet, And how insignificant this little earth 
became, but the merest speck of matter spinning in 
infinite space! Yes, men’s minds broadened im- 
measurably, not all at once, but in the course of 
years, as they contemplated the ever-increasing 
vastness of this new universe of time and space. 

Surely the world had traveled a long way from 
the age of myth and legend to the reign of 
celestial law. 


CHAPTER IIT 
THE Mranina or Evo.ution 


‘‘THe prophet of the newer religious thinking 
now looks out upon a universe that is marching up- 
ward, under the guidance of an Unseen Leader 
whose signals from the heavenly battlements are to 
euide the pilgrim hosts. Slowly the fire mist cools, 
puts on a decent crust, and becomes the home of 
cities and civilizations. Slowly the soil climbs 
toward grass and shrub and flower. Slowly the 
little rose, always single and pink, drops its petals 
to enrich the soil, that to-morrow’s rose may be 
double and crimson with every hue and perfume. 
Slowly the thorn apple becomes the Winesap and 
the Golden Pippin. Slowly the wild rice becomes 
the Fife wheat; the Indian corn that had six husks 
around every grain climbs toward the ear that has 
husks only on the outside of all the grains. Slowly 
the hut becomes the home; the forked stick a steam 
plow; the hollow log, the Mauretania; the rude 
hieroglyphs upon the tree, telling which way the 
hunter went, become letters and literature. Slowly 
the ochre on the cheek of the savage becomes the 
canvas on the wall; and the stone altar becomes the 
eathedral, while the medicine man, pounding on the 
drum, becomes the pipe organ; the bleeding human 

52 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 53 


sacrifice becomes the sacrifice of a broken and 
a contrite heart, an acceptable gift offered to an 
unseen Friend and Ruler. And this creative act of 
development is manifestly going on every moment, 
for all who have eyes to see the invisible signs, or 
ears to hear the sweetest overtures that ever fell 
from the battlements of Heaven. Through ever 
enlarging cycles and higher levels, this creative 
work that began as the blade and journeyed on 
toward the stalk will increase until it becomes the 
full Harvest of God.’’ Thus, does Doctor Newell 
Dwight Hillis writing in The Forum, for July, 1923, 
interpret the religious meaning of evolution. 

And so we may gather that evolution is the 
eternal law of growth. It had its beginning with 
God, and slowly, majestically, it takes its course 
across the countless ages, which we call Time, toward 
that ‘‘one far-off divine event to which the whole 
creation moves.’’ It was at work in the nebula 
which gave birth to our solar system. It makes this 
world of ours kin to the dog star and the fire mist 
of the Milky Way. It links us to the vast ‘‘heavenly 
host’? which peoples the infinite depths of space. 
Even when the ‘‘earth was without form, and void,’’ 
this law of growth found expression in the marvel- 
ous systems of atoms, molecules and electrons,— 
the building blocks, so to speak, of the Great Archi- 
tect. The elemental forces of heat and wind and 
rain and moving water which shaped our planet for 
the abiding-place of living things worked in perfect 
harmony with this symphony of eternity. And, 
when in the Infinite Scheme of things the first 


54 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


simple forms of life appeared, they began to evolve 
to the music of this marching song of the ages. 
When so recently that it seems but yesterday, in 
comparison with the myriads of centuries which 
had preceded, man appeared upon this earth, it 
was in accordance with the fundamental Purpose 
which governs the destinies of all creation. 

But what does evolution mean to the average 
individual? What is this strange doctrine which to 
many seems to have fallen like a bomb into a peace- 
ful camp, upsetting our orthodox notions of the eter- 
nal verities of things and spreading dismay among 
the worshipers of a sacred past? What is this re- 
ligious furor, of which we hear so much, all about? 
What is the gist of this battle between the Funda- 
mentalists and the Modernists,—a battle which 
sounds like religious thunderings of the Middle 
Ages? Why do the legislators of certain states seek 
to prohibit the teaching of evolution in the public 
schools? Does this new knowledge destroy the faith 
of our fathers? Does it imperil the progress of the 
spiritual forces of civilization? Does it blaze new 
trails where angels fear to tread? Does it destroy 
belief in God? Has it brought us face to face with 
the time when, as Comte said, ‘‘we may escort the 
Creator to the edges of the universe and bow Him 
out with thanks for His past services’’? Is this 
theory of evolution merely a pretty guess, a fine- 
spun fiction of the imagination, or does it rest upon 
a solid basis of evidence and facts? Is this a colos- 
sal piece of error and falsehood that men assail or a 
majestic truth of God’s eternal years? These are 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 5D 


some of the questions which are troubling honest 
souls, and they deserve answers which shall leave 
no room for doubt. 

But before we can discover these answers, we 
must drag forth this monster of evolution from his 
Jair and turn upon him the full searchlight of truth, 
No belief, either religious or scientific, has anything 
to fear from the truth. Sometimes I am reminded 
of the old gentleman who, when told that the facts 
did not support his contention that the earth is flat, 
retorted, ‘‘So much the worse for the facts,”’ 

The other day a friend said to me in conver- 
sation, ‘‘You don’t believe, do you, that stuff about 
man’s coming from a monkey or an ape?’’? And 
this question illustrates precisely the idea which 
hundreds of people have of evolution. It measures 
the sum total of their false ‘‘learning’’ concerning 
this epoch-making theory. How far this notion is 
from the real teachings of scientists has been well 
put in the following words of Doctor Hillis taken 
from The Forum, for July, 1928: ‘‘It is, however, 
not accurate in terms of science to say that man 
came upward from the ape and the monkey,—indeed 
it is quite untrue to science to hint at such an 
affirmation. What science does say is that ages 
ago the life path parted at a point where the ances- 
tors of man started toward a thin skull and a large 
brain, while the other physical line started toward 
an ever-thickening skull with a stationary brain and 
after untold ages has developed into the ape. Mil- 
lions of years after these two lines parted company, 
one being became man, standing forth under the 


56 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


stars and with adoring thoughts answering certain 
signals from the sky. The answer is not which 
origin would we prefer, but which origin represents 
fact in history.’’ 

The question of my friend is simply the cen- 
turies-old question which has been asked about 
every great discovery of science. Men do not like to 
be jostled from their comfortable niches of mental 
security. For ages the heart pumped the blood 
through the body, but no Harvey perceived it. 
Gravitation had held sway from nebula to planet, 
but no Newton explained its law of action. From 
the beginning of our solar system the earth has 
been whirling about the sun, but not until ‘‘yester- 
day’’ did Copernicus and Galileo indicate the path 
of its motion. For millenniums the lightning flash 
and the crash of thunder startled men, but no 
Franklin sought to discover their causes. From the 
foundations of the earth, the fossil record of the 
rocks has been as an open book, but no eye, until 
recent times, was able to read their dialect. The 
evidences of evolution, too, lay about men in be- 
wildering profusion, but no Lamarck or Darwin 
appeared to unravel their meaning. 

But now let us make an earnest effort to dis- 
cover what evolution is and what it is not. Let 
us try to understand the evidences upon which this 
theory rests. Like a jury, we shall sit in judg- 
ment upon this new view of the development of 
life. If the evidence seems to be insufficient, we 
shall not hesitate to condemn it. But if the facts of 
observation and experiment lead us step by step to 


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THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 57 


the irresistible conclusion that evolution is God’s 
way of working out the divine pattern of the 
universe, our verdict must proclaim the truth. As 
Doctor Charles EK. Jefferson said to me in a recent 
letter, ‘‘If newly discovered truth conflicts with the 
Bible, or with the Creed, then the interpretation of 
the Bible and the Creed must be widened to make 
room for the new facts.’’ 


WHAT EVOLUTION’ MEANS 


Evolution is the scientist’s answer to the eternal 
question ‘‘How?’’?’ How did this earth and the 
solar system of which it is a part come about? What 
was their origin? In what form did this planet take 
its beginning? When and how have the manifold 
forms of life of past and present geologic time 
appeared? Is creation a process or a product? 
Does it represent a single grand fiat at a compar- 
atively recent moment of cosmic time, or is it the 
eradual unfolding throughout the ages of a divine 
pattern in which the Creator has spun the threads 
of destiny and woven them into the fabric of fire 
mist, sun and planet,—of earth and water and life? 
Is creation still going on, here and now? Is God 
still at work in His universe? Or, is the product 
of His handiwork a static thing, a stranger to 
change and growth? Does the legendary story of 
creation, written in the childhood of the race, tell 
us the whole truth about the origin of our world? 
Must we shut our eyes to the facts of scientific in- 
vestigation? Are we not permitted to believe that 
God is still revealing Himself in every new dis- 


58 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


covery of science? And may not this progressive 
revelation be the fundamental fact of evolution? 
Does God no longer raise up prophets to proclaim 
His truth? May not the distinguished scientist, 
Doctor J. S. Haldane, be right when he says ‘‘the 
life of such a man as Charles Darwin is in truth a 
standing proof of the existence of God’’? 

Let us get rid at the very outset of the false 
idea that evolution eliminates God. That ‘‘The 
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firma- 
ment showeth His handiwork’’ is as true to-day as 
when uttered by the Hebrew Psalmist three 
thousand years ago. In the words of the late 
Lyman Abbott, appearing in The Outlook for Feb- 
ruary 15, 1922, ‘‘that evolution removes God from 
the universe is not true; on the contrary, it shows 
Him now and always im the universe; it gives a 
new significance to Christ’s saying, ‘My Father 
worketh even until now’; it justifies the sacred 
poet’s declaration, ‘God is never so far as even to 
be near’; it shows us nature and history full of the 
presence of God.’’ As we shall see, evolution with- 
out God is an impossible cenception. 

And as to the relation of evolution to life, let us 
quote from an article in The World’s Work, for 
May, 1924, by Professor Vernon Kellogg, one of the 
foremost scientists of this country. He says, ‘‘Kivo- 
lution means continuity, means transmutation, the 
origin of the new from the old; means change, con- 
tinuous movement, gradatory development. It 
means genetic (historical) relationship, blood cous- 
inship, an all-embracing genealogy of life. Every 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 59 


living creature, be it monstrous whale or microscopic 
phosphorescent animalcule in the ocean, free-roam- 
ing tiger in the jungle or minute parasite that crawls 
about over its skin, wheeling eagle surveying its 
broad domain of air and land over a life span of 
many years, or swarm of fluttering May-flies danc- 
ing an evening’s life away about an electric light 
by the lake shore, giant sequoia holding its proud 
place in a Sierran forest through thirty centuries, 
or tenderest bit of transitory moss that nestles at 
its base—every living creature, large or small, long- 
lived or ephemeral, active or quiescent, myriad- 
celled or single-celled, is, in certain fundamental 
structure and behavior, like every other living crea- 
ture. It has need, to remain alive, of certain physi- 
cal and chemical surroundings which every other 
living creature has to have, and it does certain 
things which every other creature does.”’ 

And so we may say that evolution in its broad 
aspects stands for progress, for divine revelation; 
that it is the method of creation, the eternal ex- 
pression of the life of God in all created things. It 
means the kinship of all life. It shows us, as we 
shall see, that plant and animal life, beginning with 
the simplest forms, ages and ages ago, so long that 
it bewilders thought and staggers the imagination to 
attempt to think of so remote a past, has slowly and 
without haste evolved into constantly higher forms, 
until at last the animal line of ascent culminated in 
man, of whom we may exclaim with Shakespeare, 


What a piece of work is a man! How noble 
in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and 


60 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


moving, how express and admirable! in action how 
like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the 
beauty of the world—the paragon of animals! 


And if this lowly origin should seem to any of 
us repugnant to our pride,—a pride arising from 
many centuries of self-worship,—let us remember 
that it does not rob man of his sense of uniqueness. 
He is the only animal-into whom God has breathed 
the faculty of reason. He is still the lord of all 
creation. And his ancestry is a noble one, for it is 
in accord with the divine plan of the universe, and 
to be divine is to be noble. 

There is, indeed, something truly noble in this 
emergence of man from the brute and savage. 
Driven by the heat of summer, the cold of winter, 
changing climate, famine and pestilence, peril and 
hardship, man was forced to struggle and at last to 
think. Then one day the dreamer appeared in his 
midst, and with him began the dawn of civilization, 
for it is to the dreamers that the race owes its 
homes and inventions and arts and laws and 
liberties and religions. 

And who can doubt that in it all, from the lowest 
organism to the soul of the dreamer, we see the 
life of God as the immanent source and guide of 
all creation? 


THE HISTORY OF EVOLUTION 


The idea of evolution is older than the Christian 
religion. It had its origin way back in Greek 
philosophy. This thought of the continuous 
development of the universe from the simple to the 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 61 


complex had a wonderful charm for that brilliant 
race of speculative thinkers. Still, with those early 
Greeks the theory was only a guess. It was like the 
happy guess of Democritus concerning the exist- 
ence of atoms,—a guess which turned out to be 
surprisingly similar to the experimental theory set 
forth by John Dalton twenty centuries later. But 
unfortunately the Greeks placed little value upon 
observation and experiment. As a result, they ac- 
cumulated no evidence to support their idea, and no 
champion appeared in defense of it for many 
centuries. 

But sooner or later every great idea, if it be 
true to nature, must find expression. And so it 
was with evolution. All through the Middle Ages 
this speculative theory of the Greeks was allowed to 
slumber, just as for so many centuries their notion 
that the sun is the center of our solar system, and 
not the earth, was suppressed. But to many care- 
ful observers the fact of evolution constantly 
became more and more apparent. Leonardo da 
Vinei, that many-sided genius of the Italian Renais- 
sance had notions of evolution. Finally, during the 
last decade of the eighteenth century, three dis- 
tinguished men, independently of one another and 
practically at the same time, proposed the first 
explanation of evolution. These men were Goethe 
of Germany, St. Hilaire of France, and Hrasmus 
Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) of Eng- 
land. 

These pioneers in a new domain of scientific 
investigation, however, soon found themselves only 


62 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


eroping somewhat blindly in search of the truth. 
Their belief that animals are plastic to their en- 
vironments, as clay beneath the potter’s fingers, 
proved to be a superficial and inadequate ex- 
planation of the undoubted fact of evolution. 
Strange as it may seem, the first real evidence 
of evolution was provided by an English surveyor, 
William Smith, whose keen observation was 
challenged by the fossil shells preserved in the 
rocks and soils over which he worked. Fossils had 
been noted many times before, but they had only 
excited curiosity. Some had thought them the im- 
perfect specimens of God’s handiwork in His early 
attempts at creation. Others had believed that the 
Creator placed these fossils in the rocks for the 
express purpose of mystifying men. But not so, 
this shrewd surveyor. He saw that the fossils were 
of different kinds, and that they were arranged in 
regular systems. He began to explore the country 
for vertical sections of rocks, and wherever he 
found them, the fossils were always in the same 
order. He became fascinated with the investiga- 
tion. He was quick to see that many of these forms 
were quite different from any then living. There 
was but one conclusion. They were the fossil 
remains of extinct animals which had lived in some 
previous geologic time. As he passed from the 
older to the newer rocks, the animal life became of 
a constantly higher and more recent type. 
Gradually, certain forms of life disappeared and 
never reappeared in any later rock layers. It was 
not long until Smith was able to designate the 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 63 


relative age of a rock and the order of its occurrence 
from the character of its fossil population. 
Irresistibly the conviction forced itself upon his 
mind that the earth in past geologic time had been 
successively inhabited by species of animals which 
had each in its turn become extinct. An epoch- 
making idea was this, and one which was destined 
to bear fruit an hundred-fold. 

And it soon became apparent that intermingled 
with these evidences of extinct animals were the 
fossil forms of plants, many of them, too, belonging 
to species not then living upon the earth. Here 
were surely the imperishable volumes of Nature’s 
library. ‘True, the record is fragmentary; its 
chapters are scattered; and there are many broken 
lines and missing pages. But it is a marvelous 
tale that this record has preserved throughout the 
ages, and its language is so plain that all may 
understand. These are the real tablets of stone on 
which the Creator has engraved the progressive 
record of His handiwork. These fossils are not 
fictions of the imagination, but enduring evidences 
which any one may verify anywhere. No one 
familiar with this overwheming mass of evidence 
can longer believe that in the beginning God created 
the vast numbers of animals and plant forms in 
fixed species, exactly as they exist to-day As we 
shall see, this belief has now been made utterly 
impossible. 

But you ask, ‘‘How were these fossils, which give 
us so vivid a picture of the life in those far-off ages, 
formed?’’ Let us see. While the sediments which 


¢ 


64 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


formed the rocks in which the fossils occur were 
still soft, they received the impress of creeping 
things. They were marked by the waves of the sea 
and pitted by the raindrops of passing showers. 
Such sediments were constantly forming about the 
margins of both salt and fresh water, just as they 
are to-day. In them innumerable shells and the 
skeletons of all sorts of animals became embedded, 
even as the life of the present age is writing upon 
the plastic tablets of lake and sea bottom its im- 
perishable record for the countless centuries yet to 
come. Succeeding layers of sediment covered these 
dead remains, sometimes to great depths, each layer 
in turn becoming the fossil burying-ground of what- 
ever types of life happened to live and die at the 
time of its formation. During the inconceivably 
long periods of time which followed, the shifting 
contours of continents, the gradual elevation of sea 
bottoms, and the filling of lakes slowly added these 
deposits, now hardened into rock, to the mainland. 
To-day, we uncover these indelible impressions of 
early geologic life with our plowshares, we find 
them on the canyon’s side, we blast them from the 
quarries, and we dig them from the mines. In them 
we read the life story of our planet. And the suc- 
cessive rock layers unfold for us, too, the leaves of 
nature’s ancient herbarium. They caught the dying 
leaf and twig and branch of early geologic forests 
and preserved for future ages the delicate tracery 
of their myriad forms. Closing about the tree- 
trunk, these soft sediments changed it into stone. 
Not long ago, in the library of the Wyoming 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 65 


Geological and Historical Society, at Wilkes-Barre, 
Pennsylvania, I saw the fossilized form of a huge 
tree-stump, taken from a coal mine three hundred 
feet below the surface. In some far-distant time, 
millions and millions of years ago, we may be 
perfectly sure that this stump supported a majestic 
tree, possibly a monarch, among its associates, 
towering giant-like into the air and sunshine of 
some Carboniferous forest. And we know that the 
long slabs of bark on exhibition, totally different 
from any forms now living, once covered real trees, 
throbbing with life and probably clothed in beauty. 

One of the most notable examples of plant 
fossils ig to be found in the coal beds. That coal is 
of vegetable origin, ‘‘the litter of primeval swamps 
and forests,’’ now buried hundreds of feet beneath 
the surface of the earth, there is not a shadow of 
doubt. Slowly, through vast periods of time, this 
erystallized sunshine was accumulated for the 
world’s present need. But immense as these 
periods seem to us, they are but fleeting moments 
in the evolution which fitted our planet for the 
abode of man. These fossil records, found in such 
bewildering abundance, enable us to picture in 
imagination the warm humid climate and the 
luxuriant vegetation of those coal forests which 
ante-dated so many millenniums the appearance of 
man upon earth. 

Here, indeed, are chapters from the early history 
of the earth and its life which exist in their own 
right, independently of any myth or legend. And, 
through the interpretation of the scientist, they 


66 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


reveal a record of undoubted truth. We shall refer 
to this fossil record again in stating the chain of 
evidence in support of evolution. 

After William Smith came Baron de Cuvier, the 
leading French scientist of his time and the 
founder of comparative anatomy, to forge the next 
link in the preliminary chain of evidence. One day 
while working in a quarry, workmen unearthed 
some strange-looking bones. They carried them to 
Cuvier, and his examination quickly told him that 
these bones belonged to a species of animal which he 
had never seen before. With this discovery as a 
starting-point, Cuvier had within a few years ac- 
cumulated bones from about twenty-five species of 
animals that he believed were no longer living upon 
the earth. A little later in a published volume on 
fossils, he described for the first time the mammoth, 
an extinct type of elephant, which many centuries 
before had roamed throughout Europe and as far 
north as Siberia. It was clear to Cuvier that many 
species of animals had lived upon the earth in past 
geologic time which have since become extinct, and 
he announced this view in his writings and public 
lectures. 

But inexplicable as it seems to us to-day, the 
great Cuvier did not correctly explain the ap- 
pearance and extinction of these successive species 
of animal life. A simple but superficial answer at 
once presented itself. Special acts of creation 
produced the first species. Then at intervals in 
world history, great natural catastrophes had oc- 
curred, completely engulfing the earth and destroy- 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 67 


ing all life upon it, each in turn followed by re- 
newed acts of special creation to provide new 
species. Hiven this moderate explanation proved 
startling to those orthodox individuals and theolo- 
gians who wished to believe, regardless of the 
evidence, that rocks, fossils, animals and plants had 
been created in the beginning by one grand fiat, just 
as they exist to-day. But with these historic discov- 
eries and the discussion which they provoked, the 
outworks of the citadel of special creation fell. No 
longer could there be any doubt that some sort of 
evolution had taken place upon this planet. 

Then came Sir Charles Lyell, the greatest 
geologist of his time, to show that the history of 
our planet, as revealed in its rocks and fossils, 
gave no evidence of world-wide catastrophic 
changes. ‘This temporary refuge of those who 
blindly fought the progress of scientific investiga- 
tion seemed about to be swept away. For the first 
time, a truly great scientist announced his belief 
that the same slowly acting forces of nature, which 
we see in operation all about us to-day, have also 
wrought the changes of the globe in past geologic 
time. With irresistible logic, he pointed out that 
the age of the earth, from being but five or six 
thousand years, as required by the Story of 
Creation, must be millions and millions of years. 
To crown it all, he shattered the centuries-old myth 
that the fossils of the rocks were produced by the 
Deluge of Noah. The indignation of church leaders 
and orthodox believers knew no bounds. Lyell was 
attacked without mercy and for a time he was 


68 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


socially ostracized. No attack of the present Fun- 
damentalist movement against the teachings of 
evolution can compare with the bitter denunciation 
of Lyell. Yet to-day, the simple truths which he so 
ably set forth a century ago have become by 
common consent a part of the instruction of every 
school child of the country. Gradually, enlightened 
churchmen everywhere saw the untenability of their 
position and quietly withdrew. It was a repetition 
of the surrender of their predecessors to the 
Copernican theory of our solar system and a fore- 
cast of what will be the ultimate verdict concerning 
the truth of evolution. 

Still, although the fact of evolution could no 
longer be doubted, no one had come forward with 
an adequate explanation of the process. And we 
may say in passing that, while no prominent 
scientist of the world to-day doubts the fact of 
evolution, still no entirely satisfactory explanation 
of all the facts of observation has been provided. 
This is true of any scientific hypothesis. We never 
reach ultimate truth. At that time, all of the leading 
scientists of Europe, including even Lyell, held to 
the theory of special creation, that is, successive 
acts of special creation. It may be pointed out that 
even this view, a view which was taken a century 
and more ago, discredits the literal truth of the 
Biblical account, 

Even before this time, Jean Baptiste de 
Lamarck, a contemporary of Cuvier and one of the 
most brilliant scientists of any time, had put forth 
a theory of evolution, based upon facts of direct 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 69 


observation, which in modified form has held fol- 
lowers even down to the present day. It 1s not too 
much to say that this French scientist, who did his 
most important work after he was fifty years of 
age, was the first great apostle of evolution. But 
unfortunately the opposition of Cuvier, the most in- 
fluential zoologist of Europe at that time, doomed 
Lamarck’s views to a tardy recognition, and he died 
without receiving the credit that was his due. 

His wide observation and study of fossil forms 
led him irresistibly to the conclusion that the present 
types of animal life had been evolved from lower 
types in accordance with some definite law of 
Nature. The constantly increasing difficulty which 
he experienced in drawing sharp lines of distinction 
between existing species gradually convinced him 
that all animals have arisen through slow processes 
of change from some remote parentage. In 
imagination, Lamarck carried the animal life of the 
earth backward through vast periods of time to the 
simplest forms of ancestors. And in so doing he 
outlined for his own and later generations the essen- 
tial idea of organic evolution. 

To account for this ceaseless process of contin- 
uous change, Lamarck put forth his doctrine of the 
use and disuse of organs and the hereditary trans- 
mission of acquired traits, or characters. His idea 
was briefly this. When an organ is used to an un- 
usual degree, it becomes highly developed, and 
similarly the disuse of an organ causes it to degen- 
erate. He held that such organic changes are trans- 
mitted to the offspring and that the cumulative 


70 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


effect of many generations of breeding may either 
radically change an organ or cause it to disappear 
entirely. Thus, he thought birds near the seashore 
developed their long legs from the necessity of wad- 
ing deeper and deeper in water in search of food. 
The horse-like ancestors of the giraffe developed a 
long neck by being driven from grassy meadows 
into regions which compelled them to obtain their 
forage by browsing on the foliage of trees. The 
constant stretching upward after food would elon- 
gate the neck and the fore limbs. These newly 
acquired characteristics, he believed, would be trans- 
mitted to the offspring and after many generations 
a new species would be evolved. Many more 
examples might be given, but these are sufficient. 

The theory looked plausible, and it found many 
adherents. But a century and more of observation 
and experiment since Lamarck’s time seems to 
have demonstrated that the inheritance of acquired 
characters never takes place. Doctor Albert KE. 
Wiggam in his splendid book, The Fruit of the 
Family Tree, has developed this point at consider- 
able length. Lamarck’s bold announcement of a 
definite theory of evolution at that early time 
stamps him as a man of genius, but his particular 
method of accounting for the facts of observation 
has fallen by the wayside. Scientists are always 
ready to throw aside a theory which does not 
square with the facts. 

And right here let it be stated that while 
scientists differ widely as to the precise methods by 
which evolution has come about, they are practically 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 71 


unanimous as to the fact of this progressive change 
from lower to higher forms of animal and plant 
life. It could not be otherwise, for the overwhelming 
abundance of evidence makes any other view im- 
possible. And yet I wish to emphasize over and 
over throughout these pages the outstanding failure 
of many scientists to realize that evolution is 
nothing more than a description of God’s way of 
working. It simply substitutes for the poetical 
Story of Creation, as outlined in Genesis, the un- 
doubted facts of scientific investigation. But any 
attempt to account for the origin of the universe 
and the life of our planet without placing back of it 
the intelligent thought and purpose of an Infinite 
Creator is doomed to utter and complete failure. 
Even had the results of observation and experiment 
borne out Lamarck’s theory of the progressive 
development of animal species, this discovery could 
have meant only that men had drawn aside the veil 
and caught a glimpse of the divine process of 
creation. The tragedy of much of the scientific and 
theological discussion in this field during the last 
half-century and more has been due to the mis- 
understanding of this simple fact. Science and 
religion each stands in its own right, and there never 
has needed to be any essential conflict between 
them. 

Conditions did not seem right a century ago, 
even among scientists, for a favorable reception of 
Lamarck’s theory of evolution. But in 1831, just two 
years after the death of the great Frenchman, there 
began a voyage of discovery, destined to have an in- 


2 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


fluence upon the intellectual development of men, 
challenging in its far-reaching importance the in- 
fluence of that other voyage of discovery made ‘in 
1492, In that year, the British ship Beagle, in 
command of Captain Fitz-Roy, began its historic 
voyage around the world, a voyage which lasted for 
five years. There would have been nothing suf- 
ficiently noteworthy about this expedition to mark 
it for everlasting remembrance throughout the 
centuries to come, had it not been for the presence 
on board of Charles Darwin as official naturalist. 
Darwin was then but twenty-two years old, having 
been born on February 12, 1809, the same day which 
marked the birth of the immortal Lincoln. The 
simultaneous birth of two such giant leaders of the 
race should forever consecrate that day as one of 
the most significant among the annals of men. 
The purpose of the expedition of the Beagle was 
to make a survey of unexplored regions in the 
lower portions of South America and of certain 
islands in the Pacific. Darwin, the son of a dis- 
tinguished family and an ardent naturalist from his 
boyhood up, eagerly welcomed this opportunity to 
study first-hand the rocks, and the animal and plant 
life, both past and present, of unknown lands. He 
little knew, as he sailed away, that he should return 
with a mass of evidence so complete and over- 
whelming in its significance as to change not only 
his own view of the development of life upon this 
planet but also the view of the large majority of 
thinking men. In a word, he was to forge a chain of 
evidence in support of evolution, so complete and 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION ri’ 


convineing that only he who wilfully refused to 
examine the facts could longer doubt the truth of 
this all-embracing law of organic development. 
And who shall say that in these epoch-making dis- 
coveries it is impossible to desery the guidance of 
an infinite and all-wise Purpose? Darwin started 
out a believer in special creations He came back 
the world’s foremost apostle of evolution, but not 
an atheist. 

Almost overnight Darwin became a geologist, 
a botanist and a zoologist. Wherever the ship 
landed, the rocks and their fossils became the 
especial object of his study. His explorations were 
confined chiefly to long journeys in the interior of 
South America and to expeditions in the Galapagos 
archipelago, a group of volcanic islands some five 
hundred miles west of the coast of Ecuador. In 
these observations three sets of facts challenged his 
attention. (1) Buried in the surface deposits of the 
great grassy plains of Argentina, Darwin discovered 
the fossil remains of huge extinct animals covered 
with armor, like that of the existing armadillos. 
This discovery pointed irresistibly to the conclusion 
that the present species had been evolved in some 
manner from those which had become extinct. And 
it is perfectly legitimate to ask those who do not 
wish to believe in evolution how they would account 
for such variation and such resemblance. (2) And 
then again, as Darwin moved southward, he found 
that certain species of animals were replaced by 
others which closely resembled them, and yet were 
distinct. To his keen mind a very plausible ex- 


14 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


planation presented itself. As the animals of a 
single species spread over large areas, particular 
groups would become isolated. Throughout long 
periods of time, these isolated groups, in response 
to their different environments, would become so 
modified as to give rise to several new species. 
Here evolution seemed to have taken place among 
species actually living upon the earth at that time. 
(3) But most convincing of all were the evidences 
obtained from the Galapagos Islands. Here was a 
group of islands far from the mainland, rich in 
animal and plant life, which decidedly resembled 
that of the American Continent, and yet consisted 
of distinct species. Furthermore, each island of the 
group possessed a considerable number of species 
peculiar to itself, that is, related to but differing 
from those found on the other islands. Now what 
explanation was Darwin to give? What explanation 
would you give such facts of observation? 
Would you turn to the legends of Genesis and chloro- 
form your intellect, or would you exercise your God- 
given right to think and attempt to construct an 
hypothesis which should account for things as they 
are? As it seemed to Darwin and as it has seemed 
to all thinking men since, just two explanations 
offered themselves. One might stifle his reason and 
blindly profess to believe that in the beginning God 
created for these islands this peculiar animal and 
plant life closely resembling the life on the Amer- 
ican mainland and yet distinct from it and also 
distinct from any other species the world over. 
Or, one might accept the almost inevitable conclusion 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 15 


that the first forms of life were brought to these 
islands from the mainland many centuries ago by 
wind and wave and winged carrier and that by a 
gradual process of evolution the original types in 
response to a new environment have changed into 
the present species. This latter was the conclusion 
of Darwin, and it has been the conclusion of every 
thoughtful person since, whether he be scientist or 
Christian prophet. And let it be clearly understood 
that this view by no means excludes the necessity 
for a Divine Creator. It simply makes the life of 
these islands a part of the great scheme of creation, 
which began in the far distant past and has con- 
tinued on through countless eons to the present 
moment. Is there anything ignoble in such a view? 
Does it not make of creation a process of marvelous 
grandeur and beauty, continuing on from age to 
age? In place of a Mighty Magician do we not have 
the Master Mind of the universe whose life is the | 
- source and sustainer of all created things? 

But Darwin had only begun. Although he re- 
turned from his voyage on the Beagle in 1836, it was 
not until 1859, more than twenty years later, that he 
published his great book, The Origin of Species. He 
did not rush before the public with his new-born 
theory. He felt that even yet he might be wrong. 
Patiently, he devoted year after year to the accu- 
mulation of facts of observation. Scarcely else- 
where in the history of science is there a parallel to 
such earnest seeking after truth. When the oppo- 
nents of evolution assert that ‘‘Neither Darwin nor 
his supporters have been able to find a fact in the 


16 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


universe to support their hypothesis,’’ it would be 
well for them to take down from its shelf Darwin’s 
Origin of Species and acquaint themselves with the 
bewildering richness of the evidence, so overwhelm- 
ing in its completeness that only he who will not 
listen can doubt the truth of this great law. The 
full case for evolution, we shall state a little later. 

Still Darwin was not content to rest with the 
piling up of evidence in support of the general law 
of evolution. He felt that there must be some way 
of accounting for the process of evolution itself. But 
for a long time he could find no key to the solution 
of his problem. Although convinced that animals 
and plants have slowly changed from one species to 
another, still the mystery of how these changes came 
about only deepened, the more he pondered the sub- 
ject. But this problem of progressive creation had 
been brought face to face with a master mind. Dar- 
win viewed it from every angle. At length his 
attention was directed to the work of breeders in 
developing new variations of domesticated animals 
and plants. He saw that many quite different races 
of dogs have been bred from one wild stock. The 
same was true of cattle and fowls. The Shetland 
pony, the thoroughbred racer, and the work horse 
have a common parentage. Among plants, the cab- | 
bage, the cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and kale have 
descended from a common ancestor, the wild cab- 
bage. And every one is familiar with the miracles 
in artificial breeding which have been produced 
by Luther Burbank. Here Darwin saw evolution 
taking place under his very eyes. He saw how 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 17 


breeders, by selecting certain accidental variations 
in particular animals, are able to develop a type 
quite different from the parent form. And these 
facts gave Darwin his clue. It was quite clear to 
him that from the standpoint of special creation 
such modifications of animal and plant life could 
never occur. Species could never vary. But here 
was the fact of variation, just as it might have oc- 
curred centuries ago on the Galapagos Islands. 

And yet Darwin had taken only the first step. 
It was all very well to produce variations in species 
by artificial selection, but what in Nature could take 
the place of the breeder, the conscious director of 
the process? Then one day Darwin chanced to read 
Malthus’ famous essay on Population, and this 
happy circumstance gave to him one more key to the 
solution of his problem. The keen struggle for ex- 
istence between the constantly increasing popula- 
tions of the globe, so vividly pictured by Malthus, 
was just the factor needed by Darwin to complete 
his explanation. This now famous theory rests upon 
four factors, each of which is an undisputed fact: 
variability, the struggle for existence, natural selec- 
tion, or the ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ and heredity. 

It should not be forgotten that Alfred Russell 
Wallace, a distinguished contemporary of Darwin, 
independently put forth a precisely similar theory 
at practically the same time. The magnanimity dis- 
played by each discoverer toward the other is a 
beautiful incident in the history of science. 

As to variability, it is a matter of common ob- 
servation that the individual members of any species 


18 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


always differ slightly among themselves and from 
the parent members. No two individuals are exactly 
alike. 

The struggle for existence is an outstanding ex- 
perience of all life, in all environments, the world 
over. Keen, often ruthless, never-ceasing, with a 
sweep that includes all living forms, wielding a scep- 
ter of imperial authority,—this arbiter of the tides 
of life, constantly sifting and selecting, seems to 
decide upon which individuals shall be conferred the 
privilege of continuing the life stream through suc- 
ceeding generations and which shall be fated to 
return quickly to the source from which they sprang. 
A little reflection will serve to show that many more 
offspring are produced than can possibly survive. 
As Professor Scott, of Princeton, says, ‘‘if every 
ege of the herring should develop to an adult fish 
and reproduce in its turn, it would not be long until 
the Atlantic Ocean would fail to contain them.”’ 
Considering the human family, if we place a gen- 
eration at twenty-five years and allow four children 
per family, the descendants from a single pair, 
barring death by accident, disease, or starvation, 
would in one thousand years reach the staggering 
total of a million million individuals. In a certain 
field there may be growing a thousand plants. Put- 
ting the number of seeds per plant at one hundred 
and assuming no mishaps, we should expect one 
hundred thousand plants the following season. Yet 
examination discloses that at the end of the season 
there are still but one thousand adult plants. What 
is the explanation? We must find it in the struggle 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 19 


for existence. Accident, disease, or starvation have 
claimed ninety-nine out of every hundred plantlets. 
That particular field did not afford room and sus- 
tenance for more than one thousand mature plants. 
And this serves to illustrate the biological law that, 
eliminating unusual life conditions, the number of 
adult members of any species remains practically 
the same from year to year. Therefore, we see that 
in this competition for food, air, light and suitable 
living conditions, as well as in the resistance to 
voracious enemies and the ravages of disease many 
must die. This seems to be a fundamental law of 
life. The incident of death looms large as a neces- 
sary factor in the survival of any species. ‘‘Many 
are called, but few chosen.’’ 

But the big factor in Darwin’s explanation of 
evolution and the one which will forever be insep- 
arably associated with his name is natural selection, 
or in the more fitting phrase coined by Herbert 
Spencer, the survival of the fittest. And yet what 
determines which offspring shall survive and which 
shall perish? What constitutes the magic wand of 
fate? Is it a mere matter of chance, or does some 
definite law or process govern in this border-land of 
life and death? What separates the sheep from the 
goats? What selects the fit and rejects the unfit? 
For the most satisfactory answer to these perplex- 
ing questions, we are indebted to Darwin and his 
theory of natural selection. 

Let us illustrate. Suppose we were to consider 
one hundred individuals, exactly alike in every re- 
spect. It would then be a pure matter of accidént 


80 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


as to which would survive and which would die. But 
individuals are never identical. There is always the 
inevitable factor of variability. And these chance 
variations may give to particular individuals a bet- 
ter adaptation to their environment and conse- 
quently a decided advantage in the struggle for 
existence. The stronger individuals succeed, while 
the weaker ones fail. The successful member of 
any group is the one which happens to be a little 
better adapted to his environment than are his 
associates. The unsearchable mystery of life and 
its development has endowed certain individuals 
with advantages over their fellows. Why this 
should be, science is totally unable to say, but it is 
thought this outstanding fact of variation becomes 
the arbiter of destiny and a controlling influence of 
tremendous import in the evolution of living forms. 
And thus we see that there comes about a nat- 
ural selection of those individuals which are best 
equipped to meet the life conditions of their environ- 
ments. We may liken the process to a sieve which 
eliminates the weak and disadvantageously adapted 
members of a race or species and preserves the fit. 
It was the master key which unlocked for Darwin 
the very ante-room to the eternal mysteries of life 
and its manifold changes. As we shall see, how- 
ever, natural selection, in the sense of blind chance, 
is an utterly unthinkable explanation of evolution. 

And finally, as the capstone to the edifice of 
evolution, we have the fact of heredity. Without 
it, there might be chance variation, but not pro- 
gressive variation. Without the possibility of 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 81 


transmitting to offspring those favorable charac- 
teristics which have enabled certain individuals to 
conquer their environment and win out in the strug- 
gle for existence, there could be no upward climb 
of evolution. But heredity performs precisely this 
service. And it is right here that Darwin’s theory 
differs from that of Lamarck. Lamarek held 
to the transmission of characteristics acquired 
during the lifetime of the individual. But, as has 
already been pointed out, experience indicates that 
this never occurs. On the other hand, the chance 
variations which an individual inherits from its 
parents are transmissible to offspring. The cumu- 
lative effect over many generations, resulting from 
the continuous transmission of favorable character- 
istics, Darwin clearly saw would result in very ex- 
tensive changes and possibly in the production of 
new species. 

August Weismann, who died in 1914, was the 
scientist who first drew attention to the modification 
of the germ-plasm as a possible explanation of the 
origin of new species. A convert to the theory of 
evolution from his first reading of The Origin of 
Species in 1861, he will be remembered chiefly for 
his theories of heredity. They all centered about 
what he called the germ-plasm. By this is meant that 
particular part of the germ-cells which transmits 
from generation to generation the heredity factors. 
He held that this hereditary principle is absolutely 
continuous from the present time back to the earliest 
generations of living things. In substance, all of his 
major propositions as regards the germ-plasm 


82 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


theory are accepted by scientists. As a result of 
extensive experiments covering many generations, 
he became convinced that acquired characters are 
never inherited by offspring. The question is not 
now as to whether such characters may be trans- 
mitted, but whether environment can so modify the 
germ-plasm as to produce changes in subsequent 
generations. Weismann admitted that this might be 
true, but contended that the character of such 
changes is wholly unpredictable. In this view, later 
scientists concur. Hnvironment, however, may have 
a larger influence than Weismann was willing to 
concede. It is interesting to know that this early 
apostle of evolution was an even stronger advocate 
of natural selection than Darwin himself. 

Here at last was a workable theory of evolution. 
Kiven after more than a half-century of hostile erit- 
icism and merciless attack from theologian and 
scientist alike, natural selection stands to-day as the 
most plausible descriptive explanation of the pro- 
cess of evolution that has yet been set forth. Given 
simple forms of life with the inherent capacity to 
variation in their offspring, together with a keen 
struggle for existence and the fact of heredity, and 
we can easily see how through vast periods of time 
successive species may originate. Starting with the 
invertebrates and passing through the fishes, am- 
phibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the life line 
culminated in the appearance of man, ‘‘a little lower 
than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.’’ 

That there are many obscure points in the appli- 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 83 


eation of natural selection to the actual process of 
progressive creation, even the most ardent ad- 
herents of this doctrine will not deny. This fact, 
however, in no way challenges the overshadowing 
truth of evolution itself. That stands in its own 
right. About it there is not the slightest doubt. 
Whatever obscurity prevails simply means that as 
yet science sees through a glass darkly. Men have 
not been able to formulate a theory big enough to 
encompass the Infinite and to disclose in detail the 
manifold workings of the divine process of creation. 
Sketched against the background of the ages, we see 
in shadowy outline the salient features of a great 
law. We have come within sight of God. But that 
our persistent knockings at the door of knowledge 
will ever wrest from the Infinite the eternal mys- 
tery of life is altogether improbable. 

With the announcement of Darwin’s theory in 
1859, a tremendous storm broke loose. Man did not 
hke to be dethroned from his exalted position as a 
being distinct in his origin from the teeming life of 
the sea, the beasts of the jungle, and the fowls of the 
air. Theologians felt that this latest assumption of 
Science was an unwarranted invasion of their sacred 
domain of divine privilege and authority. Not since 
the days of Galileo had such a terrific battle shaken 
the scientific and theological world. The bitter 
and intemperate denunciation of Darwin knew no 
bounds. The thunderings of the pulpit against his 
alleged ‘‘attempt to dethrone God’’ and to establish 
‘“a brutal philosophy’’ are being reechoed to-day by 
religious enthusiasts in their last stand for a cause 


84 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


which was lost a half-century ago. Many pages 
might be filled with the frenzied statements which 
emanated both from the Protestant and the Cath- 
olic churches. But it was all to no purpose. Lyell, 
the great Scotch geologist, and a devout Christian, 
after a careful weighing of the evidence, reluctantly 
announced his complete conversion to the Darwinian 
view. Huxley, Spencer, Hooker, Gray and Haeckel, 
the leading scientists of the time, quickly followed. 
Hspecially did Thomas Huxley become the most able 
defender of the outposts of the new scientific posi- 
tion. But the facts were with the general theory 
of evolution, and, as facts are stubborn things, they 
won. 

Gradually, as the years passed and the smoke of 
battle cleared away, the theologians discovered that 
the new belief did not destroy their religious faith 
after all. The overwhelming weight of evidence 
had begun to tell. Men found that they could 
not retain their intellectual self-respect and still 
cling to the literal truth of the legendary stories 
of Genesis. The spiritual truth of these poetic inter- 
pretations of the fundamental fact of creation was 
as great as ever, but, as a tenet of theological belief, 
this dogma of a letter-proof revelation of the divine 
process passed into eclipse. Slowly the truth and 
beauty of the new conception of creation took hold 
of the minds of men. Temple, the Bishop of Lon- 
don, and one of the most influential thinkers of that 
time, announced his acceptance of the new revela- 
tion in the following words: ‘‘It seems something 
more majestic, more befitting him to whom a thou- 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 85 


sand years are as one day, thus to impress his will 
once for all on his creation, and provide for all the 
countless varieties by this one original impress, than 
by special acts of creation to be perpetually mod- 
ifying what he had previously made.’’ When Dar- 
win died in 1882, so complete had been the victory 
for his views that he was accorded by common 
consent a burial place in Westminster Abbey beside 
the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. 

The theological controversy seemed at an end. 
The truth of evolution had won a sweeping victory. 
No one dreamed that the first quarter of the follow- 
ing century would see the dying embers of this 
burned-out struggle fanned into the passionate and 
fitful flames of unreasoning fanaticism and religious 
zeal. But while the intellectual classes early became 
reconciled to the new view of creation and were 
easily convinced by the evidence, the masses ap- 
parently did not sense that there had been any battle 
at all. And, when they awoke to the implications of 
the new learning, it seemed to many of them that 
the bed-rock foundation of their religious faith was 
slipping from beneath their feet. Taking advantage 
of this situation, certain church leaders, styling 
themselves Fundamentalists and harking back to 
the unenlightened days of the Middle Ages, have 
sought to gain a temporary victory for reaction and 
ignorance. But they have ranged themselves in de- 
fense of a cause which has lost every important 
battle in the history of Christianity. In these re- 
ligious zealots we see reincarnated the spirit of 
bigotry and intolerance which burned Bruno at the 


86 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GO 


stake, persecuted Galileo, brought about the horrors 
of the Inquisition, sanctioned the frightfulness of 
witchcraft, opposed the amelioration of human suf- 
fering through the advance of medical science, and 
sought to thwart intellectual growth and the evolu- 
tion of the human soul. But these abortive efforts 
can not long stay the triumph of a cause whose truth 
is ‘‘as red as blood, as certain as sunshine, as vital 
as the tides of spring, as powerful as gravity, with 
a victory that is inevitable.’’ 


Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; 
The eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error wounded writhes with pain, 

And dies among his worshippers. 

The dead hand of the past can not long fetter the 
living present. It is as utterly futile to attempt to 
stay the march of scientific progress or turn back 
the hands of Time to the dark night of medieval 
superstition as to seek to prevent the rising of the 
tides. Dogmatism has had its day. Its sun has set. 
The geography of the ancient world has been re- 
fasioned in the light of the discoveries of Columbus 
and Magellan. The heavens of the early church 
have been superseded by those revealed through the 
telescope of Galileo. The movements of the heavenly 
bodies have been brought under the majestic sway of 
Newton’s universal law of gravitation. Fetish has 
given place to enlightened medical research and the 
miracles of modern surgery. The atoms and the 
molecules are yielding up their age-old secrets of 
energy and matter. The boundless ether carries the 
human voice to the uttermost parts of the earth. 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 87 


The sun of truth, both spiritual and scientific, is 
risen. The mists of ignorance, doubt and super- 
stition can not long obscure its rays. And we may 
confidently believe that the divine law of evolution, 
linking as it does in one majestic plan of creation 
the formless chaos of the fire mist with the God- 
conscious soul of man, will in the no distant future 
receive, from scientist and Christian prophet alike, 
the world-wide recognition of its sovereign sway. 
The very march of scientific and spiritual progress 
is in itself an evolution of human knowledge. It is, 
indeed, a manifestation of the ‘‘life of God in the 
soul of man.’’ 


THE DARWINIAN VIEW TO-DAY 


It can not be emphasized too strongly that the 
fate of evolution is in no way bound up with the 
success or failure of the Darwinian theory of nat- 
ural selection. Among scientific men, Darwin’s 
particular explanation of the biological facts of the 
geologic past and the dynamic present finds many 
opponents, but the broad outlines of evolution are 
established beyond the possibility of successful 
refutation. William Bateson, one of the foremost 
scientists of England, said in a recent address at 
Toronto: ‘‘Our doubts are not as to the reality 
or truth of evolution, but as to the origin of species, 
a technical, almost domestic problem. Any day that 
problem may be solved. The discoveries of the last 
twenty-five years enable us for the first time to dis- 
cuss these questions intelligently and on a basis of 
fact,’’ 


88 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


As to the early, or even ultimate, solution of the 
fundamental problem of the origin of species, Pro- 
fessor Bateson is probably too optimistic. Beyond 
question, we shall learn more concerning the me- 
chanical factors of the process, but the ultimate 
cause can not be stated in mechanical terms. The 
simple fact is that, when man attempts to fathom 
the unsearchable mystery of creation itself, the 
problem is too stupendous for his finite powers. 
The only adequate explanation is Divine Intelli- 
gence, working in and through the manifold forms 
of energy and life. The defenders of natural selec- 
tion can never explain on any mechanical basis the 
real cause of the vital changes in the germ-plasm 
and the consequent variations among the individual 
members of a species. This is the crux of the whole 
matter. We can not escape it. God is just as essen- 
tial to the production of these changes,—changes 
without which evolution could never have started,— 
as he was for the creation of the Hebrew world ac- 
cording to Genesis. 

The theory of natural selection says: given a 
tendency to variation, the struggle for existence, 
and heredity, and Nature will select and evolve on a 
constantly ascending curve of development the mul- 
titudinous species of animal and plant life. Yes, 
but who gives this inherent tendency to variation? 
There must be an adequate cause. Life without a 
source, a self-running vitalistic system, is as impos- 
sible in the world of living organisms as is perpetual 
motion in the realm of mechanics. Back of it all we 
must place the Supreme Lawgiver of the universe, 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 89 


And what is Nature but a manifestation of God? 
The factors in the theory of natural selection un- 
doubtedly give a more or less truthful description 
of God’s method of creation, but let it be emphasized 
that they are only description. For the poetic, 
legendary account of creation, as given in Genesis, 
evolution substitutes the undisputed facts of scien- 
tific investigation. But back of it all must stand the 
Thought and Purpose and Intelligence of an In- 
finite Creator. 

The very expression ‘‘survival of the fittest?’ 
implies purpose. An organism must be fit for 
something,—fit to live, fit for its environment, fit 
to take its place in the vast scheme of creation 
whose beginning and end are beyond the limits of 
our imaginations. The language of evolution itself 
is full of the idea of personality. Natural selection 
implies a selector, and we can not relegate this fun- 
damental factor of the process to the blind chance 
largely involved in the struggle for existence. No, 
we can not get away from the idea of God. Just as 
in the days of the Hebrew prophet, He is still the 
overshadowing fact of all existence. Just as in arti- 
ficial breeding man must select those characteristics 
which he wishes to develop, so in Nature must the 
inherent Purpose of the Infinite produce and select 
those variations which will make for divine progress. 

Finally, there is very much for which natural 
selection seems totally unable to account. To cite 
just one example, natural selection, if it is to become 
an adequate and workable theory, must account for 
the perfect development of such a delicately ad- 


90 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


justed organ as the human eye, and that by a series 
of chance variations which must run the continually 
repeated risk of obliteration through cross-breeding. 
Under such requirements, the sheer inadequacy of 
the theory at once becomes apparent. ‘The in- 
evitable rule of law which seems to control these 
progressive changes is too big to be explained with- 
out assuming a Divine Lawgiver. Natural selection 
is undoubtedly a large factor in the process of evo- 
lution, but that it is an all-sufficient explanation 
few scientists would now wish to assert. To hold 
that natural selection alone is the ‘‘workman, or 
architect, that selects or rejects’’ from the inherited 
variations of individuals those which make for evo- 
lutionary progress is to credit the blind chance of a 
mechanistic process with achievements so marvelous 
that it is unthinkable that they could be accomplished 
by anything less than Intelligent Purpose. Natural 
selection, important as it is, is but a single phase 
of the Divine Plan of Creation. 


LATER THEORIES 


Hugo De Vries, a Dutch botanist, has thrown 
new light upon the process of evolution, but the 
inscrutable mystery of it all is as deep as ever. 
Some twenty years ago, while botanizing in his 
native country, he discovered that here and there 
a certain primrose, which had been introduced from 
the United States, would suddenly and with no ap- 
parent cause give rise to an entirely distinct species. 
This truly remarkable occurrence led De Vries to 
conduct a series of experiments in his Botanical 
Garden, running over a period of a number of years, 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 91 


The result of these elaborate experiments was the 
discovery that now and then an entirely new sort 
of individual would suddenly appear in a pedigree. 
De Vries bred from that flower fourteen new per- 
manent varieties. These inexplicable changes 
in the plant forms, De Vries called ‘‘mutations,’’ 
and he used them as the basis of a new explanation 
of evolution. 

De Vries holds that it is not the small variations 
among individuals which determine the course of 
evolution, but these sudden and larger mutations. 
Otherwise, his theory agrees precisely with Dar- 
win’s. And yet Darwin recognized that theoretically 
new species might suddenly arise. It is believed 
that these mutations are transmitted through the 
germ-plasm of the parents, but as to their real cause 
we are as much in the dark as ever. Mutations, both 
among plants and animals are an undoubted fact, 
but why they should occur, no scientist can say. To 
understand them we should have to know what God 
is. In the words of Tennyson, 


Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all in my hand, 
Little flower,—but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 


Mutations are interesting as evidence of the 
probable way in which new species have occurred in 
Nature, but nothing more. As Professor William B. 
Scott, of Princeton, says in his Theory of Evolution, 
“Interesting and important as the mutation theory 


92 THROUGH SCIENGE TO GOD 


undoubtedly is, it offers no explanation of the phe- 
nomena, for the cause of such sudden changes 
remains a complete mystery. The seat of the 
change, it can hardly be questioned, must be sought 
in the germ-plasm of one or both parents, but we 
have not the least inkling of how such modification 
is brought about.’’* 

And when at the end of the journey, this search 
for the hidden cause of life and its manifold changes 
brings us face to face with an insoluble mystery, 
what else can man substitute for this eternal ques- 
tion mark of the ages, except God? 

Back in the ’sixties of the last century, Johann 
Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, carried out 
some epoch-making experiments in which he dis- 
covered important factors involved in the laws of 
heredity. But, again, these investigations have 
thrown little light upon the fundamental problems 
of evolution. In some respects, they have even 
complicated it. Unquestionably these Mendelian 
laws, which we can not describe here, are immensely 
valuable to breeders and of the utmost significance 
to the science of genetics, but they have opened no 
new door to the ultimate explanation of this master 
law of creation. As well seek to understand the 
essence of the law of gravitation or the inmost secret 
of electricity as to compass the origin and evolution 
of life. 

Let it be said, too, that while scientists know 
much more about evolution than was known a half- 
century ago, there is much less certainty as to the 


*The Macmillan Company, 1917, 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 93 


controlling causes. The various theories do not fully 
explain. Men are still groping for the truth. Yet, 
we may say with perfect confidence that, whatever 
may be the discoveries of the future, no explanation 
ean ever supersede the necessity for a Divine Being 
as the energizing source and immanent guide of all 
creation. 


THE EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 


Now let us look for the evidences of evolution 
itself. There we shall be on sure ground. We shall 
not be seeking to explain the mystery of the process, 
but simply to discover the fact of ceaseless organic 
change, as it is written in the fossil dialect of the 
rocks and revealed in the abundant evidence from 
other sources. But, judge and jury that we are, let 
us approach this case with an open mind and listen 
to the evidence with an impartial ear. 


THE EVIDENCE FROM CLASSIFICATION 


One of the chief functions of botanists and zoolo- 
gists in the early days of the science was the classi- 
cation of animals and plants. And this work is still 
a fascinating and important branch of biological 
pursuits. After a prodigious amount of critical 
study, living forms are arranged in groups known as 
species, genera, families, sub-orders, orders, classes, 
and branches, or phyla. We need not be frightened at 
this somewhat formidable array of terms. Let us 
illustrate their meanings with examples. We will 
start with the European wolf and follow him along 
this ascending order of groups wherever he may 


94 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


lead us. First of all, he belongs to the species 
known as Lupus, which is the Latin word for wolf. 
All the members of this species are more like one 
another than they are like other kinds, or species, of 
wolves. Still there are some other species, each 
given a Latin name, and all of them are placed in 
the genus called Canis. It is interesting to know 
that dogs, believed to be domesticated wolves, con- 
stitute one species of this genus. Now the true 
wolves, jackals, foxes and many other dog-like ani- 
mals are grouped together in one family named 
Canidae. All of these forms are more or less re- 
lated to such beasts of prey as cats, bears, otters, 
raccoons, weasels, ete. Therefore these families are 
all placed in a sub-order known as Fissipedia. You 
will note that the relationship constantly becomes 
more remote, the further up the scale we go. These 
terrestrial forms are now joined with such marine 
animals as seals, sea-lions, walruses, etc., to form 
the order designated as Carnivora. This order, 
together with several others, which have many char- 
acteristics in common, is placed in the class named 
Mammalha. And finally this class of mammals is 
grouped with several others in the one big branch 
of Vertebrata, or vertebrates, distinguished for 
having a backbone. 

Let us next consider that there are just two ways 
of explaining the relationships existing between 
these various groups: the Biblical method of special 
creation and the scientific method of evolution. If 
species have appeared upon the earth in response to 
a distinct act of special creation in each case, then 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 95 


these seeming relationships are wholly ideal, or 
arbitrary, and there is no real kinship between the 
different species of a genus. That is, species were 
absolutely fixed by the Creator in the beginning and 
there never has been and never can be any instance 
of the origin of one species from another. This 
was the view which prevailed down to the time of 
Darwin. 

The first investigator to find a stumbling-block 
to the acceptance of this theory of special creation 
was Lamarck. He was the first scientist to under- 
take a thorough and systematic classification of the 
lowly forms of animal life, known as invertebrates. 
But he soon found that the clear distinction of one 
species from another was often an exceedingly dif- 
ficult thing to make. And this has been the expe- 
rience of every similar investigator since. The wide 
variations among the individuals of a single species 
and the almost insensible gradations of the species 
of the same genus into one another make this work 
of classification a problem of marvelous complexity. 
Indeed, Lamarck came to the conclusion that there 
is no hard and fast line between species, and, even, 
among scientists to-day, there is often a radical 
difference of opinion as to how many species should 
be recognized in a particular genus. The rapid re- 
sponse of species to a change of environment and 
the wonderful ‘‘plasticity’’ which they display under 
such circumstances greatly complicate the problem. 

Now, is it not perfectly clear that on the basis 
of special creation these intermediate differences 
among the species of a genus are very difficult of 


96 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


explanation? But, on the other hand, the simple 
evolutionary changes in the individuals of a species 
in response to environment and as a result of hered- 
itary variations offer a perfectly plausible and 
natural solution of the difficulty. 

Shall we still hold to the hypothesis that in the 
beginning God created all of the distinct species, 
just as they are now, and that they have never 
varied and never can? Biologists have already 
classified about five hundred thousand living kinds 
of animals and two hundred and fifty thousand liv- 
ing kinds of plants, and there are many more to 
classify. Do you not see what a stupendous prob- 
lem is involved in the theory of special creation? 
What wide diversity of geographic and climatic 
conditions must have prevailed in the Garden of 
Eden! 


EVIDENCE FROM DOMESTICATION 


Whatever may be the verdict concerning this 
first link in the chain of evidence, let us consider 
the inferences which may be drawn from the won- 
derful results obtained in the domestication of 
animals. We have already pointed out that the 
various breeds of cattle, horses, sheep and fowls 
have in each instance descended from some common 
wild ancestor. Dogs are domesticated wolves 
and are classed as a single distinct species. And 
yet, if a zoologist were to find the pointer, terrier 
and spaniel dogs, for example, living wild in a state 
of Nature, he would not hesitate to pronounce them 
as belonging to separate species. If the theory of 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 97 


special creation is correct, how have these modifi- 
cations from the common wild ancestor come about? 
There is no escape from the conclusion that they 
would have been impossible. 

Among domestic pigeons, there are over two hun- 
dred well-marked breeds, and there is abundant 
evidence that they all descended from the wild rock- 
dove. We are all familiar with the plant creations 
of Luther Burbank, such as the primus berry, the 
stoneless plum, the spineless cactus, and the Shasta 
daisy. All of our ordinary varieties of wheat have 
been developed since the days of the polished stone 
age from a single ancestor, now found growing on 
the slopes of Mount Hermon. The romance of the 
Fife wheat is but a single episode in the progress 
of evolution in very recent times. 

As additional evidence from the work of domes- 
tication, let us relate the interesting story of the 
Porto Santo rabbit. About 1420, a Portuguese navi- 
gator set free on the island of Porto Santo, not far 
from Madeira, a doe with a litter of young rabbits. 
These rabbits belonged to a domestic race which had 
descended from the European wild rabbit. So rap-. 
idly did they multiply that within forty years they 
were described as ‘‘innumerable.’’ And, in the four 
and a half centuries since, they have changed so 
completely from their original ancestor that they 
have been described by Ernest Haeckel, the great 
biologist of Jena, as a distinct species. 

A host of additional examples might be given, 
but these are sufficient. Is it not fair to ask if these 
instances of the modification of species are not very 


98 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


substantial evidences of evolution now going on? 
And if man has been able to accomplish so much 
within such a comparatively short time, what 
miracles of evolution may not have been achieved 
with God throughout the countless eons of the past? 

To the question so often asked: ‘‘ Why has evo- 
lution ceased???’ we may answer: ‘‘It has not 
ceased.’’ 


EVIDENCE FROM COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 


Professor Le Conte, in his “Evolution and its 
Relation to Religious Thought, says: 


“*Tt is impossible to exaggerate the closeness be- 
tween man’s body and the animal kingdom, from a 
structural point of view. . . . Man’s body is iden- 
tified with the body of all animals in its functions, 
with all vertebrates, especially mammals, in its 
structure. Bone for bone, muscle for muscle, 
ganglion for ganglion, almost nerve-fiber for nerve- 
fiber, his body corresponds with that of the higher 
animals. Whether he was derived from such ani- 
mals or not, certain it is that his structure, even in 
the minutest details, is precisely such as it would be 
if he were thus derived by. successive slight modi- 
fications.’’* 


That is what is meant by comparative anatomy. 
Within the animal kingdom, we find several distinct 
types of architecture. Each type exhibits within 
itself an almost endless diversity in the details of 
structure, and yet there may be clearly perceived 
one common, fundamental plan. Just as in a musi- 
cal composition a single theme may be discovered 
running throughout all of the variations of the pro- 


*By permission of D. Appleton & Company. 


"HE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 99 


duction, so does one dominating scheme pervade the 
structural organization of a particular group of 
animals. 

Let us illustrate. Strange as it may seem at 
first thought, a careful examination discloses that 
the human arm and hand, the flipper of a whale, the 
wing of a bird, and the fore leg of a lizard are iden- 
tical in their general plan of construction. Or, we 
may take the limbs of a turtle, a bear, a monkey, a 
bat and a mole. Muscle for muscle, bone for bone, 
in every instance they are essentially the same. 
The differences which exist are superficial, not 
fundamental. What is the meaning of the two sets 
of teeth in the whalebone whales,—teeth which never 
even cut the gum? Are they not to be regarded as 
relics of useful teeth which their ancestral forms 
possessed? 

Now these similarities of structure unmistak- 
ably point to a common origin, and descent with 
modification. They indicate blood kinship. But on 
the basis of special creation, they simply have no 
meaning. From the popular standpoint, this kind 
of evidence is not so conclusive as is that from 
classification and domestication, and yet these facts 
of comparative anatomy are just exactly what we 
should expect as a result of evolution. 


THE EVIDENCE FROM EMBRYOLOGY 


With the coming of the compound microscope 
and its application to biological research, it became 
possible to trace in minute detail every stage in the 
development of an embryo from the simple one-celled 


100 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


egg to the mature individual. And this work has led 
to the very remarkable discovery that all the verte- 
brated animals,—fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds 
and mammals, no matter how varied they may be in 
their habits of life, are amazingly similar in their 
embryological development. In a most striking way 
this discovery indicates the kinship of these various 
forms. The individual in his development from the 
egg to the mature state repeats in abbreviated form 
the history of his ancestral lineage. 

The embryology of man, step for step, is almost 
precisely like that of the other primates, and partic- 
ularly like that of the anthropoid apes. Not only 
this, but many structural features which become 
permanent characteristics in the lower forms of life 
appear as transitory stages in the evolution of the 
human embryo. Thus, the heart is first like that of 
a fish, then hke that of an amphibian, and only 
finally develops into the four-chambered form char- 
acteristic of mammals. More significant still is the 
appearance, while the evolving veins, arteries and 
heart are in the fish-like stage, of four pairs of well- 
marked gill slits. After persisting for some time 
without serving any useful purpose, they gradually 
disappear. The nervous system, the alimentary 
system, the excretory system, and every other sys- 
tem exhibits a precisely similar evolution. In their 
early stages of development, these various organs 
are identical with those of lower forms. Even the 
microscope will not disclose for some time into what 
type of animal an embryo will develop. At one 
stage the human embryo exhibits a well-formed tail, 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 101 


and even in the adult this one-time appendage is 
preserved in rudimentary form in the fusion of the 
four or five vertebre forming the ‘‘coccyx.’”? A 
complete coating of embryonic hair also appears, 
which passes off long before birth and which does 
not seem to serve any useful function. Other exam- 
ples might be cited. The wing of a bird, for in- 
stance, can not be distinguished, at one stage, from 
the fore limb of a cat. 

Another line of evidence closely related to the 
foregoing is that of rudimentary, or ‘‘vestigial’’ 
structures. Such structures are undeveloped organs 
which still persist in animal forms, although they 
have no apparent use whatever. The hind limbs of 
the whale, the thumb of the bird, and the splint 
bones of the horse are examples. Man himself is 
a ‘‘veritable walking museum of antiquities.’’ He 
is said to possess nearly two hundred such vestigial 
structures. In the inner upper corner of the eye 
is a minute tag, which is the last vestige of the third 
eyelid, occurring in well-developed form in most 
mammals and serving to clean the front of the eye. 
Among other human vestiges, may be mentioned the 
vermiform appendix; a complicated set of muscles 
similar to those employed by other animals for 
moving their ears, but having no use in man; the 
abbreviated tail with its set of caudal muscles; and 
the embryonic vestigial gill slits. 

What is the explanation? Why do we have so 
many features in our bodies which are so much like 
corresponding features in the bodies of other ani- 
mals? Why do we pass through, in the embryologi- 


102 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


cal development of each of us, so many stages that 
are like stages passed through in the development of 
other vertebrates? Are we not correct in assuming 
that in all this the individual recapitulates the an- 
cestral history? Inheritance, it is thought, accounts 
for the occurrence of these organs; lack of use pre- 
vents their development or causes them to dis- 
appear. In the early stages of the evolution of the 
individual, these organs did have a use, which 
heredity stubbornly refuses to forget, and so we 
find them perpetuated in a functionless rudimentary 
state. The theory of evolution gives a logical, 
almost irresistible, explanation to these interesting 
facts of scientific investigation. 

But what has the hypothesis of special creation 
to offer? It either is content to deny the facts or 
blindly shutsits eyes to them. It has no explanation, 
other than to say that these things simply are so, 
which is the giving up of explanation. But facts 
are stubborn things, and they must be accounted for. 
Evolution is the only answer. 

A simple illustration will serve to make clear the 
scientific explanation. I have in mind an office 
building which shows unmistakably that it was at 
one time a dwelling house. The vestibule and hall, 
the winding staircase, the archways, the fireplaces, 
the size and arrangement of the rooms, the windows, 
and much more all betray its residential character. 
Are we to assume that the architect who designed 
this building deliberately introduced features which 
are appropriate only to another order of architee- 
ture? The answer and likewise the aptness of the 
illustration are obvious. 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 103 


THE EVIDENCE FROM BLOOD TESTS 

‘Blood will tell.’’ Since the time of Darwin, a 
new type of evidence has brought a wealth of con- 
firmation to the evolutionary theory of man’s ances- 
tral lineage. It has come from blood tests and 
demonstrates the kinship, or lack of it, existing 
among different animals. Although these blood dif- 
ferences and similarities have long been known to 
exist, chemical analysis would not reveal them. 
Scientists sought a method that would, and at last 
they found it. 

An ‘‘anti-human’’ serum is prepared by inject- 
ing the serum from human blood into the veins of a 
rabbit, After a few days the rabbit is killed and the 
serum from his blood is found to be a wonderfully 
delicate test for human blood and also for the vary- 
ing degrees of relationship existing between human 
beings and lower types of life. Now, when a little 
of this prepared serum is mixed with the serum 
from human blood, a precipitate, that is a solid sub- 
stance, will at once form. But, if this serum is 
mixed with that from the blood, for instance, of a 
domestic animal, such as a pig, a sheep, or a fowl, 
no reaction occurs. When mixed with the serum 
from the blood of the anthropoid, or man-like apes, 
this indicator gives a distinct precipitate, although 
it is less abundant and somewhat slower in forming. 
Definite but less abundant reactions are obtained 
with the blood of both Old-World and New-World 
monkeys, 

In like manner other serums may be prepared 
which will detect with a high degree of certainty the 


104 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


relationships existing between any desired groups 
of animals. The result has been to show an unmis- 
takable kinship among all mammals, for instance, 
and to confirm in a most striking way, wherever 
these tests have been applied, the conclusions with 
regard to the truth of evolution drawn from other 
sources of evidence. 

Such discoveries as these are of immense signifi- 
eance. Only he who does not wish to believe can 
doubt their import. In them we have unmistakable 
proof of our lowly origin. Whether such proof is 
pleasing or displeasing, we must accept it. 


EVIDENCE FROM PALEONTOLOGY 


Paleontology is the fascinating science of ancient 
life. We have seen how the fossil record of these 
extinct forms laid the foundation for the theory of 
evolution. But long before this theory had come to 
the fore, geologists through a study of fossils had 
divided the past history of our earth into a series of 
eras, periods and epochs. In the oldest rocks occur 
the simple forms of invertebrate life. The Paleo- 
zoic seas of that unimaginably remote time are 
shown to have been swarming with a great profusion 
of living things, simple and primitive in structure. 
Some of them, as the mollusks, brachiopods, and 
sea-lilies, belonged to types still living. Trilobites, 
a sub-class of crustaceans, are wholly extinct. 
Spiders and scorpions, and insects, such as cock- 
roaches and dragon-flies, abounded. Thousands of 
extinct species of fossil forms have been discovered 
and described, But even before this era we know 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 105 


that there was the primordial life of the inconceiv- 
ably long Archsozoic era of which we have no 
record. a 

In the early rocks of the Paleozoic era we find 
the first fishes, followed, as we pass upward, by 
amphibians and finally toward the close of the era 
by the rise of reptiles. The appearance of amphib- 
ians shows that life was emerging from the seas and 
invading the land. These animals, too, represented 
a distinct advance in structure, and with them came 
the first sound upon this planet of an animal voice. 
The reptiles, one hundred per cent. land animals, not 
breathing by gills in any stage of their development 
and wholly free from water, represented a still 
greater advance in structure over their humble pre- 
decessors. The prolonged ice age which marked the 
close of this era caused the complete extinction of 
many ancient types. 

The succeeding Mesozoic era has often been 
termed the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of reptiles. These huge, 
hideous-looking monsters radiated in many direc- 
tions and adapted themselves to many haunts. 
Fish-lizards, swiftly gliding alligator-like types, 
and flying dragons abounded in great variety. The 
first known bird, the Archeopteryx, has been 
found in Bavaria in rocks belonging to this era. 
With the exception of the breast bone, every bone 
in the body was found, and the rocks even preserved 
the impress of the feathers. Flying reptiles, known 
as pterodactyls but not true birds, were a feature 
of this far-off time. Some of the later reptiles of 
this era began to exhibit the characteristics of mam- 


106 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


mals, and before its close this next higher class of 
animals was well established. 

In the Cenozoic, or recent era, the mammals 
came into their own. Like the reptiles before them, 
they conquered every haunt of life. Many types, — 
such as the woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the 
saber-toothed tiger, the cave-lion, and the cave-bear 
have become extinct. A constantly ascending scale 
of intelligence is seen in the development of mam- 
malian life throughout the era, particularly in the 
monkey-ape-man, and finally in the inter-glacial 
epochs brute man himself appeared. Gradually both 
animal and plant life assumed its modern aspect and 
man through long centuries won his mastery of the 
earth. 

In a number of instances complete fossil pedi- 
grees, connecting present types of animals with their 
extinct ancestral forms, have been discovered. This 
is true of the horse, the elephant, the camel and the 
rhinoceros. From Hohippus, the first horse-like an- 
cestor, measuring only eleven inches high and found 
in deposits belonging to the grass-covered Ameri- 
ean plains of early Cenozoic time, there exists a 
complete series of intermediate fossil forms. A 
wonderful exhibit, showing this historical develop- 
ment, is to be seen in the American Museum of Nat- 
ural History in New York. An interesting incident 
connected with the development of this history oc- 
curred when Huxley, on a visit to this country, was 
lecturing in New York. He traced the ancestry of 
the horse, as 1t was known at that time, and pre- 
dicted that; if the next fossil form in order were ever 





Courtesy The American Museum of Natural History. 


EVOLUTION OF THE FORE FOOT OF THE HORSE 


Fossil remains of the horse go back for three million years. Start- 

ing with a four-toed animal no bigger than a cat, a perfect series 

of the most notable geological discoveries ever made portray his 

evolution to the modern horse, each of whose hoofs has developed 
from a single toe of the original ancestor. 





THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 107 


discovered, it would have certain characteristics, 
describing what sort of an animal it must be. With- 
in six months after Huxley’s return to HKurope, 
Professor Marsh of Yale discovered this animal’s 
remains in Colorado, and they matched exactly the 
description which the distinguished scientist had 
given of them. Does it not seem true that a theory 
which is able to make such verifiable predictions has 
something more back of it than mere chance? Does 
it not show the presence of God in Nature? Can we 
not see in this modern prophecy and its fulfilment 
the revelation of a divine law? 

Putting aside all previous ideas, assuming that 
you had never heard the Story of Creation,—what 
interpretation would you place upon these facts of 
the geologic record? What would these succeeding 
cycles of constantly progressing life forms mean to 
you? Could you give any other explanation than 
‘creative evolution’’ directed by Intelligent Pur- 
pose? The Bible story does not contain this 
geologic record for the simple reason that it was 
not known at the time the Bible was written. Even 
assuming that God actually dictated the Bible ac- 
count, of what use would it have been to give scien- 
tific facts of this sort to primitive folk? They 
would not have understood them. The Story of 
Creation was the only explanation which those 
simple-minded people could understand, but we are 
not bound to retain it in the light of the contradic- 
tory scientific revelations of the twentieth century. 

And why try to teach our young people in their 
religious training a theory of the origin of life which 


108 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


is so completely discredited by a wealth of evidence 
obtained from their science studies? Does, not, too, 
the experience of the past demonstrate the utter 
futility of attempting, either by ecclesiastical or 
legislative decree, to prevent the teaching of the 
truth? No one has ever been able long to suppress 
it. It is as irrepressible as the slumbering fires of 
Vesuvius. 


THE EVIDENCE FROM GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 


We have already seen that it was the geograph- 
ical distribution of extinct and living forms of 
animal and plant life in South America and on the 
Galapagos Islands that led Darwin to the adoption 
of the theory of evolution. There is an abundance 
of other examples of similar evidence. The life on 
the island of Madagascar, at one time connected 
with the African mainland, is very markedly dif- 
ferent from that of the parent continent. During 
the long period of separation, species which were 
originally identical, have evolved into new forms. 
There is no escape from this conclusion. On the 
other hand the British Isles have so recently sep- 
arated from the continent of Hurope that new spe- 
cies have not had time to develop. 

It is an interesting fact that on oceanic islands 
far-removed from continents only those forms ‘of 
life are found which could be borne to them by wind 
and wave. Only such birds as can be carried long 
distances by strong gales appear. The fauna of 
such islands contain no mammals except bats. And 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 109 


in every instance the life, both plant and animal, is 
similar to that of the nearest mainland, yet differs 
from it in having distinct species. If special crea- 
tion accounts for these forms, why are they not 
identical with those of the mainland? There is no 
answer. But evolution affords a simple and in- 
evitable explanation. And if we admit that the 
original forms of life came from the mainland and 
have since changed into new species, then the case 
of evolution is established. 

That islands do receive life in this way is proved 
by the case of the island of Krakatoa. In 1883, half 
of it was blown away and the other half was buried 
in voleanic dust so deep that every living form per- 
ished. But in a surprisingly short space of time 
the island was revegetated, and repopulated with a 
great variety of insect life, all borne from the 
islands of Java and Sumatra. 

On the mainland, animals have been known to 
spread for great distances from their original hab- 
itats, and groups have frequently become isolated. 
As a result, after long periods of time new species 
have arisen. As an instance of this rapid migra- 
tion, we may mention the case of the horses set free 
about 1537 from Buenos Aires, upon the abandon- 
ment of the first settlement at that place. In forty- 
three years, it is said, they had spread to the Straits 
of Magellan, nearly a thousand miles distant. 


CONCLUSION 


You have heard the evidence. What is your 
verdict? Remembering that only two explana- 


110 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


tions—special creation and evolution—have ever 
been advanced, which more nearly fits the facts? 
Should we longer fetter our minds with an outworn 
legendary belief which was never intended to be 
regarded as literal scientific truth? Must we not 
accept things as they are and cease distorting the 
facts to suit some dogmatic theological view? Sen- 
timent and prejudice are unsafe guides in answering 
such questions. Only our God-given reason, which 
elevates us above the beast, can give the answer. 
And we must remember that our decision has noth- 
ing to do with the theories advanced to explain the 
process. It is concerned only with the fact of evo- 
lution itself. Has there been a divine process of 
ceaseless change ‘‘through ever enlarging cycles 
and higher levels,’? or do you wish to believe that 
the whole universe, including all forms of life as 
they exist to-day, were miraculously created in a 
few brief days of very recent time? And let it be 
pointed out that the idea of special creation is an 
hypothesis without a single fact to support it. Un- 
deniably a legend, whose purpose was to teach the 
fundamental spiritual truth of an omnipotent Cre- 
ator, it is an astounding circumstance that in this 
enlightened century of marvelous scientific achieve- 
ment, this incredible belief should still grip the 
minds of men. Is not a purpose moving faithfully 
and steadily across the ages immeasurably more 
impressive than one which is realized in a day? 
Does it not enable men better to appreciate the vast- 
ness of creation and inspire them to a life of 
reverence in the presence of the Infinite? After all 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 111 


it is not a question as to which belief we prefer, but 
which belief squares itself with the known facts of 
the universe. There is not a shred of evidence to 
support the story of special creation, but a bewil- 
dering array of the most authentic observations 
known to science proclaims the universal truth of 
evolution. We do not hesitate to accept at face 
value the latest discoveries of scientists with regard 
to atoms, molecules and electrons,—radio, medical 
research and astronomical mysteries. Why should 
we refuse to believe the equally valid discoveries 
concerning the past history of our planet and its 
life? 


THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 


Before me lie the tiny seeds of a common garden 
flower. So small that they are almost indistinguish- 
able from one another with the eye, each of these 
little seeds contains a germ-eell, from which will 
spring a new plant, faithfully repeating in a thou- 
sand minute details the form and structure of the 
parent plant. And I know that the plant will pro- 
duce a flower true to the ancestral type, yielding 
a host of tiny seeds, each one again endowed with 
the same marvelous potencies. How does it come 
about? Why do the violet and the buttercup, each, 
select from the same food source just exactly the 
elements needed for its peculiar growth and build 
them in accordance with its own unique pattern of 
beauty? What is this creative urge which enables 
the green chlorophyll of a living leaf together with 
sunlight to change carbon dioxide and water into 
plant cells, while in a dead leaf this transformation 


112 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


is an impossibility? What is the source of this life 
which animates all Nature? Why this succession of 
seed-time and harvest throughout the centuries? 
Why does the ‘‘advancing year ever bring the rose 
of spring’’? What divine force is enshrined within 
that ‘‘treasure-house of all the ages,’’ the living 
cell from which evolves a human being,—endowed 
mayhap with genius.and always with the God-con- 
scious soul of man? In these questionings of the 
Eternal, we are face to face with the unsearchable 
mystery of life. To answer them, we should need 
to know what God is. 

From whence came those first simple forms of 
life upon our planet, millions and millions of years 
ago,—forms bearing within themselves the creative 
impress of evolving life? Evolution has pushed 
this problem back to the very frontiers of creation, 
but still our thought is not content to rest. Life 
surely had a beginning, in lowly forms, in some 
immeasurably distant time. How did it originate? 
Some have held with Lord Kelvin, Helmholtz and 
Arrhenius that life may possibly have come to this 
planet from the depths of space, wrapped in the 
crevices of meteoric matter. But even were this 
true, it only shifts the burden of creation to some 
other spot of the universe. Others have suggested 
that in that far-away early period of youthful ex- 
uberance conditions may have been such that living 
things spontaneously evolved from non-living mat- 
ter by a natural process of synthesis. Recent 
experiments by Professor Baly have shown that 
an organic compound known as formaldehyde can 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 113 


be produced by the prolonged action of sunlight on 
water and carbon dioxide. But we are confronted 
with a vastly more difficult problem. It is a living 
organism capable of reproduction and endowed 
with the creative capacity to evolve into constantly 
higher and higher forms of life for which we must 
account. 

Still there can be no doubt that when, in the 
course of that infinitely slow evolution from nebula 
to planet, conditions suitable for the support of life 
arose, living things appeared as simply and as nat- 
urally as in the springtime ‘‘the cowslip startles in 
meadows green.’’ This emergence of life was but 
an incident in the unfolding of that divine plan 
which from the very beginning has held within the 
scope of its Infinite Purpose electrons and nebula, 
stars and solar systems, cities and civilizations. 
And when we have carried life back to Him who 
is the one overshadowing fact of all creation, we can 
go no further. The rational mind can accept no less 
than Divine Intelligence as the ultimate source of an 
intelligible world, and of anything above and beyond 
that we can form no conception. 


EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIAN FAITH 


Evolution exalts the Christian faith. For the 
crude notion of a Master Artificer, it substitutes the 
Divine Immanence of all creation. It has trans- 
formed the primitive idea of God into one commen- 
surate with the illimitable universe which science 
has revealed to the minds of men. This notion of 
immeasurable eras of time, of ceaseless growth, of 


114 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


infinite resources has inspired many men with some- 
thing of the feeling of Immanuel Kant when he 
said, ‘‘Two things fill me with unspeakable awe,— 
the starry heavens above and the moral law within.’’ 
Concerning the relation of science to Christian 
faith, the words of three of the foremost Christian 
prophets of modern times will be helpful. Let me 
quote from a letter recently received from Doctor 
Charles EX. Jefferson, pastor of the Broadway 
Tabernacle in New York City. He says: 


‘‘In response to your request, let me say that 
Im my opinion there is no real conflict between 
science and religion. Whatever apparent conflict 
there may have been, has been due to the shortsight- 
edness and bad temper of a few representatives of 
both sides. Neither side is guiltless. Both sides 
have been bigoted and bumptious. Each side has 
rushed into the territory of the other and set up 
claims which could not be maintained. Such unfor- 
tunate exhibitions of bad manners are happily grow- 
ing less and will some day, let us hope, pass entirely 
away. A Christian need have no fear of science. 
He is a professed follower of the truth, and to him 
truth ought to be dearer than all things else. It is 
the business of science to seek facts. The Christian 
is glad to accept them just as rapidly as they are 
found. The scientist is fearless in his search for the 
truth, and so is the consistent Christian. If loyal 
to Christ he has the scientific spirit. He is ever 
pressing on knowing that he has not attained. He 
longs to know more and more. He expects to be 
able to do greater and greater things. He tests all 
ideas and hypotheses, and holds fast to that which 
is good. If newly discovered truth conflicts with 
the Bible, or with the Creed, then the interpretation 
of the Bible and the Creed must be widened to make 
room for the new facts. Facts are words of the 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 115 


Lord, and in these facts we get a fresh revelation of 
the mind and purpose of the Eternal. The Chris- 
tian Church, therefore, has nothing to fear from 
scientific investigations. Christian leaders are in 
no alarm over the progress of scientific research, 
They are immensely indebted to science for her 
amazing revelations, and have been profoundly 
stimulated by the progressive unveiling of the ma- 
terial universe. The ultimate outcome of the whole 
scientific movement of the last hundred years will 
be a strengthening of the fundamental doctrines of 
the Christian religion, and a powerful aid to faith 
and hope and love.’’ 


Doctor S. Parkes Cadman, pastor of the Central 
Congregational Church of Brooklyn and a preacher 
of international renown, in reply to my request for 
a statement upon this subject, referred me to his 
book Ambassadors of God, from which I quote the 
following passage: 


‘‘Of all the theories science has put forth that 
of evolution was the most capable of being recon- 
ciled with Revelation. You believe, I venture to 
assume, that the Christian Faith is bound to take 
unto itself the verified wonders of creation, which 
are resonant with the goodness and wisdom of 
Deity; that the cosmos must be intelligible to man- 
kind; and that whatever makes life more rational 
and therefore more truly divine should be a part 
of the praise which the Church offers to her Lord. 
Why then was not the idea of progressive develop- 
ment ‘baptized into Christ’? The assertion that the 
several endowments of sentient existence, orig- 
inally breathed into one or more primordial sub- 
stances, were ceaselessly urged onward toward 
higher existence had nothing in it essentially op- 
posed to Christian truth. Renewal, growth, fer- 
tility, contingent perfectibility; what are these but 


116 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


spiritual terms imported into the natural world?— 
terms with which the New Testament abounds at 
every turn. Here, as it impresses me, was a unique 
opening for the attachment of the hypothesis of 
progressive development to the highest interests of 
the race. Its conscious possession and use in the 
Church were indefinitely postponed by the explicable 
but costly reaction of theologians and preachers 
who refused to harmonize the facts of science with 
the realities of faith.?’* 


In another passage, Doctor Cadman speaks of 
the ‘‘vain attempts to transmute the poetical com- 
positions of Genesis into actual events.”’ 

The late Doctor Lyman Abbott, in reply to a 
parent’s question asking ‘‘how the theory of evo- 
lution can be reconciled to the Biblical account of 
creation in teaching young children,’’ said: 


‘<T answer, by teaching them the nature and uses 
of the Bible. 

‘*A child grows up in the home and imbibes the 
impression that the Bible is an infallible authority 
upon all subjects. His religious teaching in Church 
and the Sunday-school is fragmentary; no attempt 
is made to give him any systematic religious instruc- 
tion. He therefore systematizes it for himself. The 
result is something like this: 

‘‘Six thousand years ago God made the world. 
He made it in six days and launched it on its voy- 
age. Since that time He has done nothing more to 
it except occasionally to interfere with its natural 
operation, as in the Deluge, the destruction of 
Sodom and Gomorrah, and the crossing of the Red 
Sea. But that sort of thing He does not do any 
more. He made man perfect, as he made every- 
thing else perfect. But the first man disobeyed 


*The Macmillan Company, 1920. 


THE MBANING OF EVOLUTION 117 


God, and all the disease and sin and misery in the 
world has resulted from that disobedience. 

‘“‘This child goes to school carrying some such 
idea as this with him. And before he gets through 
the high school he finds all secular teaching set on a 
different key. Life is progressive. Creation is 
continuous. As the tree grows by a progressive 
process from a seed, so the world has grown by a 
progressive process from chaos. As the man grows 
by a progressive process from the babe, so the race 
has grown by a progressive process from a pre- 
historic cradle. The child’s religious impression has 
been that life is static, with occasional divine inter- 
ventions. His entire system of school education is 
founded on the assumption that life is a continuous 
progress, ‘There is no one to tell him that ‘evo- 
lution is God’s way of doing things.’ And it will 
not be strange if he rejects the Bible which has 
never been interpreted to him, the Church which 
has never interpreted itself to him, and religion 
which he has come to regard as a bar, not an in- 
spiration, to progress,’”* 

Similar statements might be obtained from many 
other of the world’s foremost Christian leaders, 
Doctor Hillis has already been quoted. Enlightened 
Christian leadership everywhere recognizes the 
transcendent truth of evolution and welcomes this 
new conception of divine revelation. In place of the 
absentee God of the older Church thinking, a God 
who set the world going and then went off and left 
it except for an occasional miraculous interference 
with its orderly operation, evolution puts the God 
of here and now, always creating, always speaking, 
always revealing Himself, and in each succeeding 
age more fully and more clearly. It dispels the 


*The Outlook, volume 130, page 290. 


118 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


false idea that revelation ceased at the close of the 
Old and New Testament days. 


Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten. 


And life itself is a revelation of God. He is for- 
ever revealing Himself in all Nature, in every golden 
sunrise and gorgeous sunset, in each new spring- 
time with its wonderful renaissance of life, in the 
ripening harvest, in the glory of the heavens, in 
the beauty and the terror of the sea, in the per- 
petual flux of all creation, in the miracles of science, 
and in the ebb and flow of civilizations. This 
Divine Immanence is in us and all about us. It is 
the source of inspiration for every sermon and 
every poem, every painting and every work of 
sculpture; it is the soul of music and the guide of 
genius; it makes the inventor and the discoverer co- 
workers with the Infinite; it manifested itself in the 
prophets of old, and to-day it lives again in every 
scientist and searcher after truth. Evolution has 
brought God immeasurably nearer to the souls of 
men. 


Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with 
Spirit can meet— 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet. 


In the words of Whittier, 


I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I eannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 


THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 119 


Creation and, therefore, the Divine Immanence, 
which we call God, is everywhere. Both animate 
and inanimate Nature ceaselessly breathe of His 
presence. 

Fortunately, the spiritual progress of the race 
does not depend upon the acceptance or the rejec- 
tion either of evolution or special creation. Crea- 
tion is the outstanding fact of the universe and 
exists independently of any human explanation. 
Proceeding out of the countless eons of the past and 
moving forward into all eternity, this ceaseless be- 
coming embraces in the vast sweep of its infinite 
purpose every phase of human progress, both ma- 
terial and spiritual. For a few fleeting moments of 
cosmic time, the human race emerged but yesterday 
from its shadowy past, participates in this tri- 
umphal pageant of the ages. Whither it will lead 
no one can say. In the following beautiful lines, the 
poet Holmes has hinted at the possible significance 
of it all for the soul of man: 


Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! 


CHAPTER IV. 
Tue Rise or Man 


Yes, man has risen,—not fallen. That is the 
message of science and the gospel of the newer re- 
ligious thinking. Taking his origin from a lowly 
ancestry, possibly a million years ago, brute man 
at length began to feel within his slumbering soul 
the first dawning consciousness of those God-given 
powers which were gradually throughout uncounted 
centuries to transform him from a creature of cir- 
cumstances into the master of the earth. Beast-like 
in appearance, of savage impulses, thick-skulled and 
small-brained, cunning, skilful, vastly superior in 
latent native ability to his associates of forest and 
plain,—this uncouth progenitor of humankind, into 
whom God had breathed the faculty of reason, 
somewhere, sometime, began that inconceivably slow 
climb which was to bring him finally to the dawn of 
civilization and to the acquisition of homes and flocks 
and inventions and arts and laws and liberties and 
religions. Reveling in the easy times and genial 
warmth of periods of mild climate, suffering the 
most terrible hardships from the Arctic cold of sue- 
ceeding Ice Ages, frequently perishing in vast 
numbers from famine and pestilence, plunged in the 
deepest ignorance, addicted to hideous acts of crime 

at cl OOM ae Yu 


THE RISE OF MAN Peal 


and passion, subject to superstition and delusion,— 
these prehistoric kin of ours lived and died and, 
with an ever-growing faith in their divine destiny, 
carried forward the torch of progress until it now 
lights the world. That, in brief outline, is the rec- 
ord which the facts of science make it possible to 
substitute for the soul-blighting legend of the ‘‘ Fall 
of Man.’’? Ascent, not descent,—soul-expansion, 
glorious achievement, on the whole steady progress, 
the promise of illimitable future possibilities,— 
these are what we see when we silhouette the 
pageant of human evolution against the background 
of the ages. Forward and upward has been the 
general trend of the race,—not created in innocency, 
only to fall through the original sin of the initial 
pair, entailing untold woes upon all succeeding gen- 
erations. In place of that unnatural picture, the 
undoubted evidence of man’s lowly origin has 
painted for us the most noble spectacle of divine 
progress to be found anywhere in the slow unfold- 
ing throughout the ages of the Eternal Purpose 
back of all creation. 

That this earth had been the abiding-place of 
man for unnumbered millenniums before the earliest 
date of recorded history is the verdict both of 
science and archeology. The date of Menes, the first 
of the Egyptian kings whose names are inscribed on 
the monuments of the Nile Valley, is placed by the 
most eminent authorities at from 3180 B. C. to 5004 
B.C. And even then civilization was old. A vast 
antiquity of progressive change had preceded the 
first dynasties. Sculptured upon those early mouu- 


122 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


ments are types of the Egyptian, Israelitish, Negro 
and Libyan races, as clearly marked as are these 
types to-day. Such racial characteristics were not 
acquired in a decade or a century. They point to 
immense periods of previous evolution. The social 
conditions of that early time, as revealed in the 
sculptured and painted scenes preserved in the 
tombs, tell us that at the very dawn of recorded 
history a highly complex system of priestly, mili- 
tary and industrial classes, requiring long centuries 
for its development, had arisen. The art of engi- 
neering had reached a high state of perfection. The 
dikes and canals of these creative pioneers have 
been the admiration of all succeeding peoples. And 
what monuments of architecture that early civiliza- 
tion has left to us! The mighty pyramids, dating 
from an early period of Egyptian history, the 
colossal temples of polished granite, noble in design 
and beautiful in their ornamentation, and the great 
public edifices, worthy of the highest civilizations 
of later times, are eloquent memorials to a genius 
for stately and artistic construction unsurpassed by 
any other people. At the time of the oldest dynas- 
ties Egyptian sculpture was far advanced, indicat- 
ing a previous apprenticeship of great duration. 
Glass-making, dyeing, the preparation of soap, 
medicines, oils and perfumes, and the metallurgy of 
the simple ores had become highly perfected arts. 
Medicine was becoming a science. The language of 
these versatile people, in its chief essentials, had 
reached the highest point of development, and at the 
time of the most ancient monuments they were in the 


THE RISE OF MAN isvahs 


possession of writing. This imaginative race, too, 
had found time to look up at the stars. Six thou- 
sand years ago there were men among them with 
some knowledge of astronomy. The sides of the 
Great Pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal points 
of the compass with the utmost accuracy. The 
Kgyptian year took its date from the summer 
solstice. Customs and laws and the religion of the 
land were even then deeply rooted in a multitude 
of prehistoric practises. 

Can any one doubt that a vast period had inter- 
vened between the emergence of this people from a 
state of barbarism, somewhere, sometime in the 
shadowy past, and the attainment of the high degree 
of culture which we find when the curtain rises on 
the early civilization of the Nile Valley? For no 
people ever produced a civilization without an 1m- 
mense background of prehistoric struggle. We may 
be perfectly sure that, slowly and painfully, their 
ancestors passed through the Rough and Polished 
Stone Ages and the Age of Metals. Borings sunk 
through the slowly accumulating deposits of the 
Nile Valley have brought up from great depths rude 
pottery and other evidences of the handiwork of 
primitive men. These mark the lower levels at suc- 
cessively remote periods in the development of 
Egyptian art. And stretching away before the 
lowermost level is the long, long trail followed by 
the ‘‘tentative men’’ in their evolution from the 
brute state to the first faint glimmer of an awaken- 
- ing consciousness of creative ability. Hxamples of 
other early civilizations might be given. 


124 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


No, the race is not young. Just as more than 
nine-tenths of an iceberg is submerged beneath the 
surface of the sea, so is the vastly greater portion 
of our history lost in the gray mists of an unknown 
antiquity. An appreciation of these facts discloses 
the wholly unreliable character of the sacred chro- 
nology, as indicated in the legends of Genesis, and 
emphasizes even more strongly the transcendent 
truth of their spiritual teaching. Utterly false, 
however, in the primitive idea of man’s fall, the 
Hebrew teaching on this point stands corrected by 
the findings of science and the revelations of early 
civilizations. 


OTHER EVIDENCES OF MAN’S ANTIQUITY 


Suppose you were to find in the caves and 
geological deposits of a certain region chipped 
flints, implements of man’s skill, human relics, and 
the evidences of primitive methods of making fire, 
together with human bones, all lying side by side 
with the bones of the reindeer, the hairy mammoth, 
the cave bear and the woolly rhinoceros,—animals 
belonging to species long since extinct and native 
only to regions of Arctic cold,—what would be your 
conclusion? Possibly an arrow-head, as has often 
been found, still pierces a bone of its extinct victim. 
And then again, if in this same region but in other 
deposits you should discover human remains inter- 
mingled with bones of the hyena, the hippopotamus, 
the saber-toothed tiger and similar animals,—some 
of which are now entirely extinct and all charac- 
teristic of tropic climates,—how would you explain 


THE RISE OF MAN 125 


these occurrences? If the world’s foremost geolo- 
gists, too, should tell you that these deposits were 
unquestionably many thousands of years old, what 
would you have a right to infer concerning the age 
of man and the previous geological history of that 
particular portion of the earth? 

Now those are just exactly the discoveries which 
have been made in the British Isles. Is it difficult 
to picture what must have happened in those 
islands? Scientists tell us that in Europe and 
North America there have been four great Ice Ages, 
with intervening periods of mild or tropic climate. 
And the geological evidence shows that the men of 
the Rough Stone Age were involved in those great 
epochs of glaciation. In one of them, primitive meri 
must have hunted those animals of Arctic climes 
and, dying, left their own bones side by side with 
those of the beasts which supplied them with food. 
And then when the ice sheet receded and sunny 
skies and mild climates brought thither, over the 
land connection which at that time joined England 
to the continent, the animals from tropic regions, 
other men hunted these new beasts of prey, and un- 
wittingly left to us the record of their deeds. 

When we know that man lived upon this earth 
with animals long since extinct and at a time when 
the configurations of the continents were vastly 
different from what they are now and furthermore 
that he survived throughout long periods of great 
climatic changes, can we longer cling to the literal 
truth of the legendary story which places the crea- 
tion of the earth and all therein, just as they exist 


126 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


to-day, at the very recent date of 4004 B. C.? Can 
we not retain the overshadowing spiritual signifi- 
cance of that great story and still concede the un- 
doubted truth of man’s vast antiquity and his hum- 
ble origin? Must our Christian faith be bound up 
with the fate of a totally discredited theory of crea- 
tion? And does not this slow climbing upward 
through the ages give an added grandeur and dig- 
nity to the present state of man? Is there not 
something divinely majestic, too, in this conception 
of a Supreme Being who has controlled and directed 
the destinies of men from worse than savagery to 
civilization? Again let it be said that it is not a 
question of what we prefer to believe, but of what 
the facts dictate that we shall believe. 


MAN’S ANCESTRY 


We are already familiar with much of the evi- 
dence which links man’s ancestry with lower forms 
of life,—the embryological development, the vesti- 
gial structures, the blood tests, and the evidence from 
comparative anatomy. Bone for bone, muscle for 
muscle, nerve for nerve, and in many other details of 
structure, man and the man-like apes are extremely 
similar. Man is much more closely related in his 
anatomy to the apes than the apes are to the mon- 
keys. If man is a being distinct in his origin from 
all other forms of life, why this striking similarity? 
If we concede the relationship existing between the 
lower forms of animal life, why deny the validity 
of the unmistakable evidence of man’s place in the 


THE RISE OF MAN 137 


plan of evolution? In the closing words of his great 
book on The Descent of Man, Darwin says, 


‘‘We must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that 
man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy 
which feels for the most debased, with benevolence 
which extends not only to other men but to the hum- 
blest living creature, with his godlike intelligence 
which has penetrated into the movements and con- 
stitution of the solar system—with all these exalted 
powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the 
indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’’ 

" And this has ever since been the verdict of the 
great majority of those who have acquainted them- 
selves with the evidence. 

If we attempt to classify man according to his 
anatomical structure and other animal character- 
istics, we find that he is a vertebrate, belonging to 
the class of Mammals, to the order of Primates, to 
the family of Hominide, to the genus Homo, and to 
the species Homo sapiens. As we shall see, the re- 
mains have been found of prehistoric men belonging 
to other genera and to other species, all of which 
are now extinct. 

If it should seem to some, as we proceed, that 
the actual remains of the earliest types of human 
beings are somewhat meager, let it be remembered 
that in that far-distant time no provision was made 
for the preservation of the dead. They did not often 
die in swamps or in places where their forms would 
be eovered with sediments. Primitive man’s last 
resting-place was usually in the open air at the sur- 
face of the ground, where his bones were picked by 
beasts of prey and his skeleton, weathered by rain 


128 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


and frost and dissolved by running water, soon dis- 
integrated and returned to dust. Only occasionally 
did some human form become buried in mud or 
gravel, and, thus protected, preserve to us the 
certain evidence of his early life. Not until 
comparatively recent times did men bury their dead 
in caves, which have kept their skeletons and the 
secrets of their lives. down to the present day. But 
roughly chipped flints and stones, crude implements 
called ‘‘Koliths,’’ have been found in deposits which 
geologists tell us preceded the First Glacial Age. 
And we must concede that remains of man’s craft- 
manship are as certain proof of his early existence 
as would be the discovery of his human framework. 
We know, too, that man inhabited this earth for 
thousands and thousands of years before the dawn- 
ing consciousness of his creative ability told him that 
he might adapt his hand to the shaping of simple 
tools designed to assist him in the struggle for ex- 
istence. The finding of the fossil remains of even 
one primitive type of man in rock strata whose 
geological age is known to be at least a half mil- 
hon years shows beyond the possibility of doubt 
that men, though they were sub-men, inhabited the 
earth at that time. For, if one such being existed 
then, certain it is that there were many more like 
him. 

Before we go further, let us make it clear that 
man has descended neither from a monkey nor an 
ape. That is not the teaching of science. Certain it 
is that he is related to both. All are members of 
families belonging to the Order of Primates, and 


THE RISE OF MAN 129 


all are beyond question descended from a common 
ancestry. But whereas the lines of descent of the 
monkeys and the apes have kept these types in a 
very primitive state of evolution, the God-given 
faculties of reason and an ever-expanding intelli- 
gence implanted in the soul of man have granted to 
him the supremacy of the earth and the hope of 
immortality. 

The Order of Primates emerged upon the earth 
way back at the beginning of the modern period of 
geologic time, just as grass was clothing the naked- 
ness of plain and valley with a garment of green. 
The rock record shows that their primitive home 
was in the north in both hemispheres, from whence 
they migrated southward to Malay, India, Africa 
and South America. The anthropoid, or manlike, 
Primates are divided into four families: the mar- 
mosets, the New-World monkeys, the anthropoid 
apes and men. Scientists now believe that the 
common ancestor from which these families sprang 
was that of the lowest of the mammalian orders, the 
Insectivora. Of the family of men, the geologic rec- 
ord shows that there has been a number of genera, 
and quite possibly there are others which have not 
yet been discovered, for as yet comparatively little 
of the earth’s surface has been systematically 
searched for early types. We of to-day belong to 
the genus Homo and to the species sapiens, the only 
living species, although a number of extinct species 
has been discovered. 

Let us now proceed to a description of the re- 
mains of early types of men actually found upon 


130 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


the earth and trace the record, incomplete and 
broken though it may be, down to the present 
aristocracy of all creation. In so doing, we should 
keep in mind that at some point of the inconceivably 
remote past, millions of years ago, the four families 
of the order to which man belongs branched off 
from the parent stock, each giving rise across vast 
periods of time to distinct genera and species, most 
of which are now extinct. Just what were the 
various conditions of environment and innate tend- 
encies which, in the struggle for existence, should 
have given rise to such markedly different products 
of evolution, no one can say. To know what these 
were, we should need to understand the divine plan 
of creation. But of the fact of this order of occur- 
rence, there is now no shadow of doubt. 


THE AFRICAN MAN-LIKE APE 


In January of the present year, 1925, the world 
became deeply interested in the announcement from 
South Africa of the discovery of the skull of a 
man-like ape, older and more primitive than any 
other similar remains previously found. The dis- 
coverer was Professor Raymond A. Dart, of the 
Witwatersrand University, at Johannesburg, and 
the find was made in an old cavern which had be- 
come completely filled with embedded sand and 
limestone. 

Doctor Ales Hrdlicka, anthropologist of the 
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, regards this 
skull as an important link in the story of man’s 
ancestral development. We are told that it is the 


THE RISE OF MAN 131 


skull of a four-year-old child, which was just be- 
ginning to cut its first permanent teeth. From the 
nature of the rocks in which the skull was found it 
is believed that it represents the oldest bit of evi- 
dence yet discovered of man’s vast antiquity. 

This skull has been described as that of a ‘‘man- 
like’? ape, which means that its owner was an ape 
which had started to evolve along the human line 
of ascent. The ape-like form predominated, and yet 
this skull reveals to the trained scientist distinctly 
human characteristics. We have heard much about 
the ‘‘missing link.’? However, there is not simply 
one missing link, but many. These popularly termed 
missing links are the forms intermediate between 
lower types and human beings and possessing char- 
acteristics of both. 

In all probability the original possessor of this 
skull lived nearly if not quite a million years ago 
and looked out upon a world vastly different in ap- 
pearance from ours of to-day. If the conclusions of 
scientists are correct, he was still a beast, but one 
whom God had already begun to fashion according 
to the divine image. 


THE JAVA MAN 


Previously to this most recent discovery, the old- 
est example of a human being was that of the so- 
ealled Java Man, found in 1891 by Professor Dubois, 
of Holland, at Trinil, Java, in rock strata whose fos- 
sil population shows that this man lived upon the 
earth at least a half million years ago. Sir Arthur 
Keith, one of the world’s foremost anthropologists, 


132 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


that is, a scientist whose study is the structure and 
functions of the human body, and particularly those 
of primitive men, describes this man as ‘‘a being 
human in stature, human in gait, human in all its 
parts, save its brain.’’? He belonged to a genus that 
is now extinct, but that he was simply one of a 
numerous population like him, which inhabited cer- 
tain portions of the earth at that time, there can 
be no doubt. 

The find consisted only of a skull-cap, a thigh- 
bone, and two back teeth. Stull, the expert in this 
field is able with a high degree of certainty to de- 
termine the type of being who once used these bones, 
and even to reconstruct his skeleton and describe his 
physical characteristics. We are told that the Java 
man possessed a low flat forehead, overhanging 
brows, and a brain capacity about two-thirds that of 
the modern skull. The thigh-bone shows that he 
was well adapted either to standing or running and, 
therefore, was in possession of the free use of his 
hands. It may be that he was one of the primitive 
men who fashioned the first rough stone imple- 
ments. Belonging, as he did, to an extinct genus 
and species, we know that his line was only a cousin, 
so to speak, of the present race of men. 

Associated with this find were the bones of a 
large number of mammals belonging to genera and 
species now extinct. At the time these sub-men 
lived and died, their haunts were overrun with the 
mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, a giant bea- 
ver, bison, wild cattle and wild horses. Not till 
many thousands of years later did men come into 


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THE RISK OF MAN 135 


the possession of fire, and thereby take their first 
step toward the real mastery of the earth. 


THE HEIDELBERG MAN 


Not for nearly a quarter of a million years after 
the Java Man do we find, in turning over the fossil 
record, the smallest fragment of a human skeleton. 
And then at Heidelberg, in Baden, near the Rhine, 
we find a Jaw-bone, buried in river deposits seventy- 
nine feet below the surface. That is all, and yet the 
teeth of this jaw are distinctly human. It is not 
the jaw of an ape; neither is it similar to the jaw 
of a modern human being, for its possessor could 
have had no chin. Found in undisturbed deposits, 
whose fossil population indicates an age of possibly 
three hundred and fifty thousand years, we can not 
escape the conclusion that this geologic relic with 
its tell-tale teeth belonged to an individual who rep- 
resents one more of the missing links in the long 
ancestral line, or one of its side branches, which 
led our forebears upward to the dawn of civiliza- 
tion. If it does not, in view of its place of discov- 
ery, what other explanation of its origin can be 
given? 

Side by side with it in the same deposits were 
found implements of crude workmanship, and the 
fossil remains of the straight-tusked elephant, the 
Etruscan rhinoceros, the primitive horse, bison, 
wild cattle, the bear, lion and other forms,—either 
entirely extinct or not now inhabiting that por- 
tion of the earth. None of the species then living 
exists anywhere to-day. 


134 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


THE PILTDOWN MAN 


Coming down a hundred thousand years, we find 
at Piltdown, Sussex, England, the most ancient 
human relic of the British Isles and the next dis- 
covered link in the ancestral line. This man is 
sometimes called the ‘‘Dawn Man.’’ In the same 
gravel pits with these skeletal remains were found 
the teeth of a rhinoceros, fossil bones of the hip- 
popotamus, and the leg-bone of a deer, together with 
ancient types of rough stone tools. Marks upon 
the leg-bone of the deer may have been cuts in- 
flicted by a weapon in the hands of some primitive 
man. The geological evidence places the age of this 
man at from one hundred and fifty thousand years 
to two hundred thousand. 


Although there has been considerable contro- 
versy over the exact classification of the Piltdown 
Man, Sir Arthur Keith makes the following state- 
ment concerning his brain: 


‘“‘All the essential features of the brain of 
modern man are to be seen in the brain cast. There 
are some which must be regarded as primitive. 
There can be no doubt that it is built on exactly the 
same lines as our modern brains. A few minor 
alternations would make it in all respects a modern 
brain. . . . Although our knowledge of the human 
brain is limited—there are large areas to which we 
ean assign no definite function—we may rest 
assured that a brain which was shaped in a mould 
so similar to our own was one which responded to 
the outside world as ours does. Piltdown man saw, 
heard, felt, thought, and dreamt much as we do 
still.’’ 


THE RISE OF MAN 135 


And so we must allow the Piltdown Man to 
stand as one more important piece of evidence in 
substantiation of man’s slow rise through lower and 
more primitive types. Although he was off the 
main line of ascent, there can be no doubt that he 
was a forerunner of what one day should appear 
on the earth. 

None of the men so far described belonged to 
the genus Homo, the type of the modern man. Their 
genera and species are now extinct. They were 
closely related to the present type of human beings, 
but they were not on the ‘‘line royal.’?’ The main 
part of the tree from which these collateral lines 
branched still lives, but they have become as dead 
limbs. Just when and where the genus Homo arose, 
we have, as yet, no knowledge. However, passing 
over the Rhodesian Man, whose place and signif- 
icance in the ancestral line are not yet fully de- 
termined, we come now to a species which, though 
extinct, at last foreshadowed the arrival of the 
present breed of men. From the place of his dis- 
covery, he is known as the Neanderthal Man. He 
belonged to the genus Homo, and his race is well 
established. 


THE NEANDERTHAL MAN 


The Neanderthal Man, belonging to a race which 
occupied Europe for many thousands of years and 
which probably did not become extinct to exceed 
twenty-five thousand years ago, proves his exist- 
ence and one-time sovereign sway, not by one skele- 
ton merely, but by many. In 1856, in the Neanderthal 


136 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Valley in Rhenish Prussia, there was found in a 
little limestone cavern the perfect skeleton of a 
man,—in some respects the most important discov- 
ery concerning the prehistoric occupants of Contin- 
tal Europe that has yet been made. The skeleton 
was badly mutilated by those who found it and 
partly lost. What remains is carefully preserved 
in the museum at Bonn. Since then in caves in Bel- 
gium, Croatia, France and at Gibraltar skeletons of 
more than a dozen other specimens of this race, in- 
cluding adults and children of both sexes, have been 
found. Concerning this long-lived race of men 
science speaks with no uncertain voice. It lived 
within reasonable hailing distance of modern times 
and has left us abundant evidence of its life and 
customs. Huxley has given us the following de- 
scription of its physical characteristics: 


‘‘The anatomical characters of the skeletons 
bear out conclusions which are not flattering to the 
appearance of the owners. They were short of 
stature but powerfully built, with strong, curiously 
curved thigh bones, the lower ends of which are so 
fashioned that they must have walked with a bend 
at the knees. Their long, depressed skulls had very 
strong brow-ridges; their lower jaws, of brutal 
depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth 
downwards and backwards, in consequence of the 
absence of that especially characteristic feature of 
the higher type of man, the chin prominence.”’ 


These men lived through the Arctic cold of the 
glacial climate and hunted wild beasts, many of 
which are now extinct. They doubtless represented 
the most enlightened people of the earth at that 


THE RISE OF MAN 137 


time and had taken long strides in advance of their 
more primitive forebears. They had acquired a 
fair degree of skill in making stone implements, 
and, most important of all, they had come into a 
mastery of fire, as is shown by the hearths left in 
their cave abodes. Their flints were beautifully 
fashioned in a distinctive style. We know, too, that 
this was a reverent race in whom had already been 
implanted the belief in immortality; for they buried 
their dead with much ceremony, providing them 
with ornaments and implements and an abundance 
of food, as though for a long journey. 

Doubtless the bitter cold and extreme hardships 
of the last Great Ice Age were too severe for the 
survival of the Neanderthal Man, for he disap- 
peared with great suddenness at about its close. 
That is, we find no more flints or other implements 
similar to those shaped by him in geological depos- 
its of later origin than the accumulations of the last 
elacial drift. That this race lived and died and 
ruled the earth during a long period of the Rough 
Stone Age, no one who acquaints himself with the 
evidence can have the slightest doubt. The dura- 
tion of its supremacy and the length of time inter- 
vening since its disappearance can be estimated 
with a fair degree of accuracy from the known 
thickness of the geological deposits made during 
and since its régime. Certain it is that the Neander- 
thal race has vanished from the earth and that men 
have traveled a long, long way since the days in 
which it flourished. 

Facts like these must loom large in any attempt 


138 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


to gain an adequate picture of man’s vast antiquity. 
And have we any reason to believe that our present 
stage of civilization represents more than a tran- 
sient phase in the divine plan of evolution which 
leads always to higher and higher levels? 


THE CRO-MAGNON MEN 


With the recession of the ice following the last 
Glacial Age and the coming of sunnier skies and 
milder climates, there gradually migrated into 
Kurope, probably from South Asia or North Africa, 
the world’s first known race of true men. They 
were bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, belong- 
ing to the species sapiens, which has persisted to 
the present day. The race takes its name from the 
grotto of Cro-Magnon in France, in which a num- 
ber of complete skeletons of one of the main types 
of these Newer Rough Stone men were found. Other 
skeletons of this race have been discovered in a 
number of caves upon the Continent. Where and 
how the ancestors of these cousins to the Neander- 
thal men arose, no one can say. But certain it is 
that when these gifted people came upon the scene 
of action and took their part as the leading actors 
in the great drama of human events, they had al- 
ready attained to the status of modern men. 

It is thought that these Cro-Magnon men were 
for a time contemporary with the last representa- 
tives of the Neanderthal race, but there is no evi- 
dence that the two races intermingled. And this 
places their emergence in the theater of Huropean 
affairs at about twenty-five or thirty thousand years 


THE RISE OF MAN 139 


ago. These successors and heirs of all that had gone 
before were the real cave-men of whom we so often 
read. Comprising at least one other race, the 
Grimaldi of a negroid type, these post-glacial 
peoples represent an enormous leap forward in the 
development of mankind, possibly a human ‘‘muta- 
tion’’ similar in character to the sudden and un- 
accountable evolution of a new species, occasionally 
observed in the animal and plant worlds. In 
stature the Cro-Magnon people were exceptionally 
large, their faces were broad, their noses promi- 
nent, and their brains astonishingly big, bigger 
even than those of the present inhabitants of the 
earth. In the making of stone implements,— 
knives, scrapers, gravers and similar tools,—they 
were superior to any race that had preceded them. 
Their elaborate burial customs indicate a fixed be- 
lef in life after death. They lived among and 
hunted numerous species of animals now extinct. 
The tusk of a mammoth brought down to us from 
that far distant past carries the rude but certain 
portrait of the beast himself scratched upon its 
surface. And it is in the art of these people, of 
which we have many examples, that we see emerg- 
ing the soul of man and descry in the evolution of 
the human race the hand of an Almighty Guide. 
Within the caves we find expressions of their art in 
statues and upon the walls numerous drawings and 
paintings portraying animals of that time, animal 
types never seen by men within the span of recorded 
history, and scenes from their daily life. Professor 
Henry F. Osborn, President of the American Mu- 


140 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


seum of Natural History and a foremost authority 
in the field of prehistoric man, writing in The 
Forum, for February, 1925, says of this gifted 
people: 


‘We have every reason to believe that the Cro- 
Magnon men, who dominated northern Spain, 
France and Wngland between twenty-five and forty 
thousand years ago, could compete in the art 
schools with any of the animal sculptors and paint- 
ers of our day, and judging from the size and form 
of the brain of the Cro-Magnon youth I believe that 
they could enter any branch of the intellectual life 
of to-day on equal, if not superior, terms. We know 
that they were mystical and superstitious and _ be- 
heved in magic; we know that in their art they were 
truthful. We know that they were reverent, be- 
cause in the thousands of drawings, etchings and 
paintings they have left not a single irreverent one 
has been discovered, except in some of their repre- 
sentations of man. We know that they were con- 
scientious, because their drawing has the marks of 
fidelity to truth, to the last detail. We know that 
they loved beauty, because they rapidly attained the 
full expression of beauty.’’ 


And of the cave man, Professor Osborn has 
this to say: ‘‘The cave man bore, and still bears, 
an evil reputation, because few people recognize 
that during the long cave period there were two 
entirely different types of man,—one an extremely 
ancient lower order, suddenly succeeded in Europe 
by one of much higher order. Creation of this 
man of a higher order, known as the Cro-Magnon, 
with his moral, spiritual and intellectual powers is 
utterly incomprehensible as purely a survival of 
the fittest.’’ 


THE RISE OF MAN 141 


And so itis. Any conception of evolution which 
makes it less than the expression of an infinite and 
all-wise purpose, slowly but irresistibly moving 
forward and upward throughout the ages, breaks 
down utterly in its attempt to account for the suc- 
cessive races of men, and for the sudden emergence 
of a race of peculiar gifts and superior genius. 


MEN OF THE POLISHED STONE AND METAL AGES 


But at length the brilliant Cro-Magnon race dis- 
appeared. Other varieties of the human family 
crowded into Europe, bringing with them the bow 
and arrow and domesticated animals. The new- 
comers, too, were tillers of the soul, and they re- 
placed the rudely dressed stone implements of their 
predecessors with beautiful products of polished 
stone. The coming of these men of the Polished 
Stone Age dates from about twelve thousand years 
ago, and the evidences of their culture are legion. 

These are the first people to leave a record of 
their craftmanship in Denmark and Scandinavia. 
An investigation of the peat bogs of the Danish 
Peninsula has disclosed a bottom layer derived 
from the Scotch fir, now extinct in those regions, 
followed by a second layer consisting of the re- 
mains of oak trees of different varieties, since 
largely disappeared from Denmark, and finally by 
a third layer made up of fallen beeches, the most. 
familiar tree in the peninsula at the present time. 
But what is more significant, the bottom layer of 
these bogs often contains implements of polished 
- stone, the middle layer relics of bronze, while the 


142 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


top layer exhibits specimens of workmanship 
wrought in iron. And that is always the story,— 
the oldest geological deposits preserve the most 
primitive examples of man’s art, followed in regu- 
lar order by those displaying a constantly higher 
degree of skill. Here is evolution of a kind,—the 
emergent soul of man ever expanding from smaller 
to larger spheres of activity. If there is no unseen 
Directing Agency, why this ceaseless progression? 
Men have come and men have gone, but, despite 
occasional darkness, there has always emerged a 
higher, a better and a nobler type of life and 
society. May not the creative purpose behind the 
races of men in this and, mayhap, other worlds 
manifest itself by a silent upward movement ex- 
tending across the infinite reaches of time, as truly 
as though it spent itself in a day or a week? 

The men of the polished stone implements were 
followed by the men of bronze and iron. Was it 
mere chance which led some primitive ancestor, in 
raking over the dying embers of his spent fire, to 
descry shining globules of metal? Was it only 
accident which taught him to alloy copper and tin 
to form bronze? What led him from the Age of 
Bronze to the Age of Iron? What put into the 
minds of these advancing men the first rudimentary 
knowledge of the simple machines? Can we see 
only a hit-and-miss process in this steady progress 
which gave to the race homes and language, indus- 
tries, laws, liberties, government, literature, art, 
music and religion? Does it seem possible that 
achievements so divine could arise from the spon- 


THE RISE OF MAN 143 


taneous, and unguided actions of human autom- 
atons? Utterly unthinkable, without the idea of 
God, is this steady evolution, proceeding out of 
the misty past and leading on from brute to civil- 
ized man. 

Much evidence tends to show that man sprang 
from several human stocks. There is no scientific 
basis whatever for the contention that all the races 
of men have descended from a single pair. Indeed, 
the facts point in the opposite direction. Whence 
came the yellow, black and brown races, numerically 
even more important than the white race? To as- 
sume that they have all descended from Adam, 
though they do belong to the same species, involves 
a belief in some sort of evolution. The period of 
time required, too, for such racial differentiation 
as actually exists would be far greater than any 
Fundamentalist would be willing to admit. In the 
light of modern research, this Hebrew idea of man’s 
origin must be regarded as purely mythical. 

And so the races of men multiplied and con- 
tinued to advance until they subdued the earth. 
They have tamed the sea and conquered the air. The 
lightning and the boundless ether have become 
their obedient servants. The giant steam has long 
been the plaything of Homo sapiens, and at his 
magic touch the vast storehouses of natural wealth 
have yielded up their ages-old treasure. With his 
telescopes he has explored the mysteries of the stars 
and extended the frontiers of the universe by untold 
billions of miles. With his microscopes he has 
brought within his penetrating gaze the marvelous 


144 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


perfection existing in the world of the infinitesi- 
mally small. The secrets of the atoms and the 
molecules have responded to his never-tiring search 
for truth. Inexhaustible, irrepressive energy surges 
in his veins. Creative evolution still governs the 
destiny of man, leading him on to deeper insight, 
larger visions, broader horizons, nobler achieve- 
ments. And creative evolution is but another name 
for God. ’ 

Yes, again we say, man has risen,—not fallen. 
Behind him stretches a past of stupendous accom- 
plishment. But it is only the beginning, for before 
him lies a future of immeasurable possibilities. 
Many men of science see in the biological tenden- 
cies of the race imminent disaster to the present 
state of society, but at most the eclipse can only be 
temporary. Emerging from its shadow, centuries 
hence it may be, will come a breed of men fit to 
earry on the work of God. 


CHAPTER V 
Tur Recorp or Man’s Divinity 


SoMEWHERE in the ages-old climb of man from 
brute to civilized human being, there was unfolded 
in his awakening soul the dawning consciousness 
of his divine origin. As naturally as the flower 
unfolds from the bud, or the sun, when still be- 
neath the horizon, converts the blackness of the 
night into the first twilight shadows of approach- 
ing dawn, there came a time, millenniums ago, when 
man, standing forth under the stars and looking up 
at the heavens, caught the first faint glimmer of a 
“light that never was on land or sea.’’ He began 
to feel the birth-pangs of his God-conscious soul. 
For the first time deep responded unto deep. 
In the inmost recesses of his being, was the 
feeble consciousness of a divine order outside of his 
beast-like self. And, as the centuries passed, this 
growing sense of kinship with something nobler and 
finer than himself struck its roots constantly deeper 
into his subconseious mind. Within his dull brain 
awoke the sense of beauty. A new light shone in 
his eyes. A feeling of separateness from the wild 
beasts about him took possession of his soul. The 
savage impulses, fostered by the long, long strug- 
gle for existence, began to soften under the influ- 

145 


146 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


ence of this new-born sense of uniqueness. Through 
unnumbered ages, the innate faculty of reason slowly 
evolved into the personality of the human spirit. 
Then gradually, very gradually, came thoughts of 
gods and grave mysterious wonderings as to the 
earth and the sea and the stars. | 
This expanding sense of power slowly and pain- 
fully manifested itself in the simple arts of the 
Stone Ages and in themastery of fire. Step by step 
primitive man conquered his environment and at 
length arrived at the threshold of civilization. 
Along the way he had acquired the art of language 
and the rudiments of writing. And more significant 
still, the Neanderthal men, possibly fifty thousand 
years ago, had attained to the hope of immortality 
and doubtless to a belief in a Supreme Being. We 
know this from their elaborate burial customs and 
provision for the spirit’s welfare, as disclosed in 
the explorations of the prehistoric cave dwellings of 
Kurope. Particularly is this true of the gifted 
Cro-Magnon race which lived contemporaneously 
with the Neanderthal men during their latter cen- 
turies and succeeded to the mastery of the land. 
We do not need to trace here the superstitious 
beliefs of primitive men in Nature spirits and the 
slow evolution of the idea of many gods into the 
majestic conception of one Supreme Being who 
rules not only the heavens, but the earth and all the 
races of men. In every cradle of civilization, these 
early beliefs developed into established religions. 
They constitute one of the most significant and 
unique features of the evolution of man. Implicit 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 147 


in the creative urge back of all life must have been 
this sense of divinity, this restlessness of the human 
soul, this feeling of incompleteness which led men, 
even just emerged from savagery, to grope for 
God and to build altars for His worship. Incurably 
religious, man could not adapt himself to his en- 
vironment or satisfy the longings of his soul with- 
out supplementing the strivings of his earthly ex- 
istence with a belief in God and immortality. 

And from the very infancy of civilization, men 
began to have vague wonderings as to how the 
earth and the heavens came into existence. Child- 
like, too, they invented crude stories of creation. 
They pictured powerful gods, enlarged human be- 
ings, as creating the heavens and the earth and all 
animal and plant life out of nothing within the 
short space of a few brief days at a comparatively 
recent moment of cosmic time. There was not one 
such story only, but many. And these stories were 
handed down orally for centuries before they were 
committed to written form. They are among the 
most impressive evidences of man’s divinity. Only 
a being who is essentially divine would have framed 
in the very childhood of the race such noble concep- 
tions of his origin. The wealth of learning in all 
-the centuries which have followed has not been able 
to overshadow the fundamental spiritual truth 
which they contained. | 


THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE 


The sacred literature of the Hebrew Bible, which 
enshrines the highest conception of God and the 


148 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


noblest evolution of religious faith to be found 
anywhere in the annals of men, grew like any other 
literature. It was subject to the same laws. It was 
a product of its times. It struck its roots deep into 
the myth and legend and tradition of the immense 
prehistoric background which has preceded every 
civilization. What we have to-day bears the same 
relation to the countless centuries of early toil and 
struggle, suffering and hardship, defeat and 
triumph, joy and gladness, hope and faith that the 
foliage of a tree bears to the branches, trunk and 
roots. The Bible is the world’s classic record of 
religious experience. It is vastly more a book about 
men and their growing conception of God than it is 
a book of divine revelation. Both in what it records 
of known history and in what it discloses of its 
heritage from the immeasurable spiritual riches of 
preceding millenniums, the Bible portrays the evo- 
lution of the human soul ag it is to be found in no 
other literature. In it we may trace the ever-ex- 
panding growth of any idea, such as God, man, 
duty, justice, sin, worship, as it broadened its scope 
and deepened its meaning throughout the slow up- 
ward climb of the race from infancy to maturity. 
In the Old Testament we may see the gradual de- 
velopment of those faiths and ethical ideals which 
came to triumph in the Christian religion. 

But the origin of these sacred books was not 
miraculous. As Doctor J. Paterson Smyth, one of 
the world’s foremost authorities in the field of 
Biblical literature, has pointed out, the orthodox’ 
belief in a divinely dictated authorship of thé books 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 149 


of the Old Testament was never more than an as- 
sumption. To-day, no scholar of standing holds to 
that view. These books are very human documents, 
and yet they are divine. In them we gather vivid 
pictures of the life from which they sprang. They 
reveal more or less clearly what the narratives, 
laws, rituals, doctrines and customs of these people 
meant to the generations in which they arose. The 
wealth and variety of its literature is unsurpassed 
in any other volume. It has been a treasure house of 
material for writers in every century of the Chris- 
tian Era. Take from the English classics or from 
any form of Western literature the contribution of 
the Scriptures and there would be little left. In 
this perennial source of literary inspiration, we 
find poetry of every description,—lyric, didactic, 
dramatic; passionate songs of war, affectionate 
love-songs, sublime descriptions of Nature, devout 
hymns of worship. And there we find, too, biogra- 
phies, collections of laws, legal documents, chro- 
nologies, the crystallized wisdom of many ages, 
religious rituals and ceremonials, romances, par- 
ables, legends and traditions of the past, the dream 
literature of apocalyptic visions, letters, historical 
records, and the inspired utterances of prophet and 
reformer. Like any other literature, some of the 
writings in this unique collection are of little merit. 
They bear the impress of their very human origin. 
But, all in all, these productions of the Hebrew race 
take rank among the noblest literary and religious 
masterpieces of all time. They were the outcome 
of many minds in many times, from the prophet, 


150 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


sage and seer of the dim shadowy ages of prehis- 
toric men to the apostles of Christian faith in the 
beginnings of our own era. In speaking of the 
earlier historical books, Matthew Arnold said: ‘‘To 
that collection many an old book had given up its 
treasures, and then itself vanished forever. Many 
voices were blended there—unknown voices, speak- 
ing out of the early dawn.’’ 

And yet these crystallizations of the soul’s strug- 
gle for expression and a realization of its noblest 
ideals are more than human. They are as much a 
part of the divine progress of all creation as is the 
life cycle of a solar system or the pageant of or- 
ganic evolution. They have sounded the greatest 
depths and touched the loftiest summits of human 
experience that the world has ever known. They 
are the noblest examples of the ‘‘life of God in the 
soul of man.’’ But they are not unique. Wherever 
men have climbed upward and struggled and suf- 
fered and triumphed, there we see a revelation of 
the spark of divinity which lights the soul of every 
human being. Every great religion is an expres- 
sion of God. He is the Creator of every race, and, 
although the moral and spiritual qualities of the 
soul have flowered most conspicuously in the He- 
brew branch of the human family, this religion is 
not the only one which reveals the guiding hand of 
an Infinite Purpose. Religions and this unfolding 
of the divine in man were old long before the He- 
brew people appeared at the threshold of civiliza- 
tion. Just as the fossil record of the rocks reveals 
to us the story of the earth’s past organic evolution, 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 151 


so does the Hebrew Bible preserve the world’s most 
notable example of spiritual evolution. And this 
Bible is both human and divine. 

The Bible is not infallible, nor is it free from 
error. In the earlier portions, its representations 
of God are occasionally childish and sometimes 
morally degrading. Some of its statements are 
absurd, and they are frequently subject to exag- 
geration. The crudities of its scientific teaching 
are such as we should expect from an infant race 
living in an age of ignorance and superstition. 
The supposition that they were divinely revealed 
by God to the Old Testament writers convicts the 
Almighty of astounding ignorance of the product of 
His own handiwork. Surely, had the Creator of the 
heavens spoken directly to the authors of the Story 
of Creation, He would not have given to them ideas 
so at variance with the revelations of modern as- 
tronomy. But the Bible, of course, is not a text- 
book of science. The poetry of Genesis does not 
give exact information regarding the origin of the 
earth, the heavenly hosts, and the creation of life. 
As literal description, these crude notions of the 
universe are absurd, to be sure. They represent 
only the passing fancies of a childlike people in the 
infaney of the race. That they should ever have 
been placed alongside the discoveries of modern 
science, as being of equal and indeed superior valid- 
ity, is one of the most astounding marvels of his- 
tory. The prevalence of such ideas among the 
docile peoples of the Middle Ages and the imagina- 
tive theologians of the early church is quite under- 


152 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


standable. But utterly unworthy of the immense 
benefits flowing from scientific research are those 
unenlightened would-be leaders of their fellow-men 
who would pin the spiritual progress of mankind 
to-day to a literal belief in the myths and legends of 
prehistoric times,—and that in the face of the most 
astounding array of scientific evidence to the con- 
trary that ever confronted the intelligence of men. 
As well believe in giants, fairies, demons and 
witches. Both beliefs go back to the dim shadows 
of man’s evolutionary past. But it is a curious fact 
that those who deny most strenuously this ascent 
of man from a lowly origin cling most tenaciously 
to childish and superstitious beliefs springing from 
that very past. 

Still those scientific crudities, when viewed in 
their proper setting, in no way mar the transcendent 
beauty of the Story of Creation or impair the su- 
preme spiritual truth which it unfolds. This match- 
less poetic conception of the origin of things 
crystallized for all time a belief in one God, a 
Supreme Being, who is the immanent source of all 
creation. That the facts of scientific discovery 
should indicate that our solar system had its origin 
in a nebula and that organic life, taking its begin- 
ning's in very simple forms, slowly evolved through 
unnumbered eons, until the animal line of ascent 
culminated in man, ‘‘a little lower than the angels, 
crowned with glory and honor,’’ neither detracts 
from the majesty of God nor challenges the unique- 
ness and nobility of man. No more striking evidence 
of man’s divinity can be found than this sublime 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 153 


conception of creation. It marks the first great 
turning-point in the spiritual evolution of the race. 
Like a beacon light from man’s primitive cradle, it 
shines across the centuries, even to-day, with un- 
diminished brightness. Why should men ever have 
east a reflection upon the overshadowing spiritual 
truth of this noble conception of God and the Divine 
Immanence by insisting upon its literal accuracy as 
a description of creation? As actual method, this 
mythical story is grotesque; as a symbol of the 
fundamental fact of the universe, it is sublime. 


THE LEGENDS OF GENESIS 


Yes, there aré legends in Genesis. But legends 
are not lies. A legend is a particular form of poetry. 
And why should not the lofty spirit of the Old Tes- 
tament, which has found expression in so many 
varieties of poetry also make use of legend? It is 
but natural that such a highly imaginative people 
as the Israelitish should have made poetic narrative 
the vehicle of its religious thought. In these oral 
transmissions of popular traditions, the history of 
every primitive people begins. And it must not be 
forgotten that prehistoric memories may be pre- 
served in these legendary tales of family and tribal 
life. Starting with a nucleus of historic fact or 
some great spiritual truth, these incidents of primi- 
tive life, transmitted for centuries by word of 
mouth, worked over by the imagination, enlarged 
upon and altered in many details, become one of 
the most precious legacies from the unrecorded 
past. They often deal with the intimate scenes of 


154 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


family life,—not with important historic events. 
The legends of Genesis have to do largely with the 
family of Abraham, which gave rise to the patri- 
archs of Israel. In them popular tradition has pre- 
served much that is trivial and unimportant histor- 
ically, but of wonderful interest as character 
sketches of the people, such as anecdotes of country 
life, tales of springs and watering-troughs, revela- 
tions of jealousy, deception, piety and magnanimity, 
incidents of war and stories of personal prowess. 
Little did those simple folk in those far-off 
days of family and tribal supremacy realize that 
they were making the beginnings of a sacred liter- 
ature. Yet, those poetic legends, rude ballads and 
fierce war songs, told and sung for centuries by 
bard and story-teller about the fireside and the well, 
became the nucleus around which our Bible grew. 
To this ever-increasing stream of oral tradition 
were added simple codes of justice, bits of history, 
and stories related in lonely pastures ‘‘when shep- 
herds watched their flocks by night.’’? The practised 
story-tellers at feasts and tribal gatherings took the 
place of modern books, We can picture groups, 
reverent with worship or gay with merry-making, 
listening to these patriarchal legends, singing songs 
of war and love, and often gaining from prophet 
and seer truer and larger conceptions of their great 
God, Jehovah. Repeated over and over from gen- 
eration to generation at wayside watering-place 
and public sanctuary, these stories from the past, 
often retaining but a fragment of the original set- 
ting, became part and parcel of the racial legacy. 


‘\ 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 155 


We must freely recognize, however, that centuries 
of oral transmission among a childlike and imag- 
inative people would tend to add much which is 
pure invention. Heroes are idealized. Stories are 
enlarged and altered. And yet we know that we are 
dealing with the traditions of real men and women, 
who lived and died and loved and fought and met 
both victory and defeat. True, their simple faith 
enabled them to believe many things which we 
know to be utterly incredible. But credulity was a 
chief characteristic of those early times of ignor- 
ance and superstition. And this very ear-mark 
of their age gives an added charm to these simple 
beginnings of Hebrew poetry. Most important of 
all, we trace in them the noblest conception of a 
divine order of the universe to be found in any 
early literature. 

And so, preceding the Bible, as we have it to-day, 
lay an immense background of unexampled literary 
riches. It struck its roots deep into the prehistoric 
sources of its own and other peoples’. Most of this 
ancient lore is lost. But fortunately the excava- 
tions of archeologists have enabled scholars to trace 
the very considerable contributions of other liter- 
atures to our sacred books. Particularly important 
was the influence of the Chaldeo-Babylonian and 
Egyptian civilizations. Many of these precious 
treasures of ancient thought are preserved for us 
in the legends of Genesis. And, contrary to the 
earlier belief, Genesis was by no means the first of 
the sacred books to be compiled. In completed 
form, the Pentateuch, of which it is a part, dates 


156 PHROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


from about 400 B. C., many centuries after other 
portions of the Old Testament had taken shape. 
With this knowledge, obtained by applying to the 
Scriptures the same methods of scientific investiga- 
tion that are employed in all other branches of his- 
torical research, much becomes clear which was 
before a mist. We now know that the legends of 
the Creation and the Deluge were not written until 
after the Hebrew people had come under the tutel- 
age of their Chaldean neighbors in the valley of the 
Tigris and the Euphrates. That the rich legacy 
from the religious literature of this earlier civiliza- 
tion had a profound influence in shaping these 
legends, there is not a shadow of doubt. That they 
did not originate with the Hebrew people is no 
longer open to question. That they were a direct 
revelation from the Almighty of actual events, now, 
has no more credibility than the belief in Santa 
Claus. Whoever still clings to the literal interpre- 
tation of these mythical stories, has not taken the 
trouble to inform himself of facts which for many ~ 
years have been open to the knowledge of all. 

But let us see what these investigations of the 
archeologists have disclosed. Just as the geologist 
investigates the fossil record of the rocks, so does 
the archeologist uncover the debris of ancient civil- 
izations. He permits us again to walk the streets 
of those old cities, to feel the heart-beats of their 
peoples, and in imagination to picture the humanity 
that once struggled and thought and dreamed and 
suffered there. He enables us to catch glimpses of 
the life of those peoples,—their customs, laws, 
domestic habits and religious faiths. 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 157 


In 1851 Major Rawlinson published the first 
translation of the Assyrian inscriptions, and in so 
doing began the uncovering of a civilization which 
antedates that of the Hebrew people by many cen- 
turies. It was already old in the year 4004 B. C., 
the date assigned by the sacred chronology for the 
creation of the heavens and the earth. And two 
thousand years before the legendary date of Abra- 
ham’s migration from Ur of the Chaldees, this 
Chaldean civilization had achieved much in art, 
science and literature. Many eminent scholars 
have contributed to our knowledge of these treas- 
ures of antiquity, chief among whom was George 
Smith, who in 1872 found in the ancient library of 
Asshurbanipal the first of the tablets giving an 
exceedingly close parallel of the story of the deluge. 
Soon after, he discovered in these ancient ruins 
more of the deluge tablets and all those giving the 
Story of Creation. That these sacred myths and 
legends were already old when the Hebrew writers 
incorporated them into their Bible is no longer a 
matter of speculation. Their roots penetrate into 
the legendary past, not only of the ancient civiliza- 
tions of the Tigris and the Euphrates, but of other 
early peoples. Few races in their infancy have 
failed to wonder about the origin of the stars and 
the earth and man. Of course, no man was present 
at the creation of the universe, and no human tradi- 
tion extends back to the origin of the race. Still 
the divine urge of creative evolution has impelled 
primitive peoples everywhere to seek an explana- 
tion of the whence and whither of life and of the 


158 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


universe of which they are a part. To their imag- 
inative minds and simple faiths, all miraculously 
sprang into existence at some definite and recent 
moment of past time, in obedience to divine fiat. 
But what do these tablets of ancient Assyria 
reveal? As is to be expected, there are both 
striking similarity and divergence between the 
accounts unearthed by the spade of the archeologist 
and those found in the worked over legends of 
Genesis, but the essential ideas are the same in 
both. According to the story told by the tablets, 
out of a watery chaos, a divine power brings forth 
the earth and its inhabitants. He creates first the 
sea animals and then those of the land, the latter 
being classified into three groups, practically 
identical with those of the Scriptural account. At 
various stages of the process, the Chaldean divinity 
pronounces the work ‘‘beautiful,’’ just as the 
Hebrew Creator pronounces it ‘‘good.’’ In the 
Chaldean legend, we find the solid firmament of 
heaven, and in both accounts light is created first 
and afterward the heavenly bodies are placed ‘‘for 
signs and for seasons.’’ Very significant is it, too, 
that these Assyrian tablets contain two stories of 
creation, wonderfully similar to the two Hebrew 
narratives found in the first and second chapters of 
Genesis. We discover in these remarkable revela- 
tions of primitive thought evidence of the Chaldean 
belief in the creation of woman out of man, in the 
Garden of Eden and its mystical tree, and in the 
fall of man through sin from a state of innocence. 
Here, too, we find the institution of the Sabbath 





From “The Bible in the Making,” by J. Paterson Smyth. 
-By permission of James Pott and Company. 


BOOKS WRITTEN ON BRICKS 


One of the tablets giving the Chaldean account of the 
Deluge and the Story of Creation. Excavated in the early 
seventies, now in the British Museum. 


' 
Pf 


at 


. 
. 





HE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 159 


and even its name, the mythical Tower of Babel, 
and much else that appears in the Pentateuch. 

But it is in the legends of the deluge that the 
resemblance is most apparent. In the Assyrian 
narrative, Hasisadra is apprised of the coming 
flood and is bidden by the gods to build a ship one 
hundred twenty cubits in height and of equal 
breadth. In it he took refuge with his slaves and 
family and stores of food. In accordance with the 
divine summons, he also preserved cattle and beasts 
of the earth and fowl of the air. In striking sim- 
ilarity to the Biblical account, the ship was pitched 
within and without. Hasisadra entered and closed 
the door and the flood came. So terrible was the 
storm that the gods in heaven were frightened and 
wept. The flood lasted for six days, during which 
the occupants of the ship watched the corpses 
floating by. On the seventh day, the waters began 
to subside, and after seven days more the ship 
came to rest on the mountains of Nizir. The poem 
narrates the sending forth of a dove, a swallow 
and a raven and the offering of sacrifice, concern- 
ing which it relates that ‘‘The gods smelt the 
savor,’’ even as the account in Genesis contains the 
remarkably similar statement ‘‘And Jehovah 
smelled the sweet savor.’’ And finally, we are told 
how the Goddess Istar lighted up the rainbow in 
the heavens. 

Regarding such amazing discoveries, there can 
be but one verdict, particularly so when we know 
that the Genesis narratives were not compiled 
until after the Babylonian bondage of the Hebrew 


160 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


people. That these stories are poetic narratives of 
what infant races imagined to be true, there is no 
longer any doubt. And now, written on tablets of 
stone, we have the authentic source of the Hebrew 
versions. The numerous accounts of a flood, found 
among the traditions of the Greeks, the Chinese 
and the American Indians, as well as among those 
of other early peoples, leave little doubt that some 
such catastrophe once engulfed a considerable por- 
tion of the earth since the beginning of its inhabita- 
tion by the human family. 

But let us not fail to note that these old legends 
from the prehistoric cradles of primitive civiliza- 
tions were transfigured by the divine touch of 
Hebrew thought. They were refined and purified in 
the crucible of living truth. From the polytheism 
of early thinking, we pass in the Genesis narratives 
to the transcendent conception of one God. It is 
like going from the humid bacteria-laden atmos- 
phere of the lowlands to the invigorating air of 
mountain summits. And in the tremendous con- 
trast between these two undeniably related accounts 
of the origin of the universe and its life, we see the 
most notable example of the spiritual evolution of 
the race to be found anywhere in the sacred liter- 
ature of the world. It constitutes an undoubted 
record of man’s divinity, as ineffaceable as the 
fossil imprints of early geologic life in the solid 
crust of the earth. 

With these overshadowing facts of spiritual 
values in the background, we can pass over the 
serious discrepancies in the two accounts of crea- 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 161 


tion, their crude notions concerning the person of 
God, and the unscientific features of their imag- 
inary universe. What God said or thought in the 
councils of heaven, we know to be pure invention. 
We know that the ‘‘firmament of heaven’’ is an 
optical illusion; that the sun and stars did not come 
into existence after plants; that the rivers of the 
earth do not come chiefly from four principal 
streams; that the Tigris and the Kuphrates have 
not a common source; that the Dead Sea antedates 
historical times; that only a small fraction of the 
hundreds of thousands of species of animals could 
have been got into the ark; that God did not walk 
in the Garden of Eden ‘‘in the cool of the day’’; 
that He did not make for Adam and Eve clothes 
from skins; that there is no evidence that the 
nations of the earth sprang from a single fam- 
ily; that it is highly improbable that Cain founded 
a city; that serpents do not speak; that there is no 
tree whose fruit confers knowledge or immortality; 
and that God does not speak with a human voice. 
All this and much more we now know to have been 
but literary incidents in the poetic narratives of a 
highly imaginative and exceptionally religious race. 
Ever to have identified them with actual events is 
one of the most grotesque errors of history. To 
persist in doing so in this twentieth century of en- 
lightenment is a crime against truth. To make 
belief in the literal accuracy of these outgrown 
legends essential to spiritual health is pathetic. 
Although the details can not be given here, 
Kigyptologists, by the application of the same 


162 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


methods of scientific research, have shown the large 
contribution made by the lore of the ancient Nile 
to the making of our Bible. But these discoveries, 
far from belittling the importance of our sacred 
books, enhance their value. They simply demon- 
strate that sacred literature, instead of being a 
sudden revelation, is the product of a slow evolu- 
tion from a remote past. It is the crystallization 
of the spiritual wealth of the ages. Its sources are 
multitudinous and its background the rich and 
varied religious experiences of mankind. But that 
this literature is unique in its origin, that it is free 
from error and does not bear the impress of human 
frailty, is a belief which the revelations of science 
and archeology have long since shattered. 

Still we must recognize in the growth of every 
such literature the unfolding of the divinity in man 
and throughout the whole course of its development 
the Divine Immanence of an Infinite Guide. As 
Doctor John A. Rice has said, in our Bible we see 
‘‘the life of God flowing through the soul of the 
Hebrew people.’’? Their idea of God is now material, 
now spiritual, but purifies itself as time goes on and 
continually rises to larger cycles and higher levels. 
When we silhouette the religious experiences of the 
race against the background of the ages, it is not 
difficult to discern the unfoldment of a divine 
progress, even as we do in the evolution of solar 
systems and organic life. 


THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION 


What do we mean when we think of the inspira- 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 163 


tion of the Scriptures, particularly the inspiration 
of the Old Testament? Certainly not verbal dic- 
tation. No scholar of standing to-day believes that 
God ever directly revealed any portion of our sacred 
books. Had He done so, they would not contain so 
much that is false. The Scriptures would not then 
give, as they often do, a picture of a God of passion, 
jealousy, remorse, cruelty and caprice. They would 
not mirror so perfectly the various stages in the 
spiritual evolution of the Hebrew people. The God 
of the universe would never have revealed Himself 
as a tribal deity. Had not the Hebrew people in 
their youth attributed to God their own ethical 
standards, we should not read that Jehovah com- 
manded the extermination of the Amalekites,— 
‘‘both man and woman, infant and suckling.’’ The 
God of humanity and compassion, whom we worship 
to-day, would not have administered through His 
prophet Samuel a rebuke to Saul because he had 
spared Agag. A God of direct revelation would not 
have represented Himself as attempting to kill a 
man, as an exhibition of pure malice, at a wayside 
lodging-house. Had God dictated the account of 
creation, what mysteries He might have solved for 
us mortals! We should never have had to speculate 
about the Nebular Hypothesis, the actual factors in 
creative evolution, and the secrets of the atoms and 
the molecules. The world would not have had to 
wait for Galileo to reveal the structure of the 
heavens. Had Scripture been as inerrant as early 
theologians, and some to-day, imagined, what mighty 
controversies this poor earth would have been 


164 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


spared! No, the evidences of human handiwork are 
written large from cover to cover of this old Book. 
In what then does its inspiration consist? 

Professor Albert C. Knudson, one of the most 
inspiring teachers under whom it has been my priv- 
ilege to sit, says in his The Religious Teaching of 
the Old Testament: ‘‘In the case, then, of ‘revealed’ 
truth what we should expect is that certain impulses 
from the Divine Spirit would impinge upon the 
human mind, and that these would then be worked 
up in harmony with the mind’s own laws and trans- 
lated into the concrete messages of the prophets. 
In this process much that is distinctively human 
would necessarily intermingle with the divine, and 
there would be in the process itself nothing essen- 
tially different from that observed in the composi- 
tion of other books. The Bible, we should conse- 
quently expect, would be a book or collection of books 
to be studied just as other books are. It would not 
be inerrant. Its origin and development would be 
subject to the same laws as those operative in the 
literature of any people.’’* 

And such we instinctively feel must be the case. 
Inspiration is an all-powerful, inward persuasion 
that one is called upon to do a certain thing. Thus 
do we explain the impassioned utterances of those 
fiery prophets of ancient Israel, veritable incarna- 
tions of moral power, who scourged the people for 
their wickedness with predictions of impending 
calamity and became the greatest apostles of right- 
eousness the world has ever seen, ‘They were 


*By permission of The Abingdon Press. 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 165 


mighty preachers, great moral reformers, who read 
the signs of their times and sought to save their peo- 
ple from the destruction which lives of luxury, ease 
and social injustice on the part of the richer classes 
so often invited. In this sense Abraham Lincoln 
was inspired when he penned the Emancipation 
Proclamation, the Second Inaugural, and the Get- 
tysburg Address. Lincoln was as truly a prophet 
of God as were those of old. And so were Sa- 
vonarola and the poet Tennyson and Galileo and 
Newton and a host of others. Inspiration has never 
ceased. Every truly great work of art, literature, 
science, or statesmanship is inspired of God. Why 
should He ever have ceased to reveal Himself in the 
hearts and minds of men? The creative urge which 
He implanted in the soul of man will forever mani- 
fest itself in works of inspiration. 

But as to the inspiration of the Old Testament, 
let me quote again from Professor Knudson: ‘‘Old 
Testament religion is the only national religion that 
ever survived the nation’s downfall. When other 
nations fell they threw their gods to the moles and 
the bats, thinking they had been overcome by supe- 
rior deities. And this would have happened in 
Israel had it not been for the prophets, who during 
the period of the nation’s decline elevated Yahweh 
(Jehovah) to the throne of universal sovereignty, 
and declared that the destroyers of the nation were 
simply the instruments of His wrath. This is a most 
remarkable fact without parallel in the religious 
history of mankind. Had monotheism originated in 
Assyria or Egypt, it would not have been so strange, 


166 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


for these empires were virtually world-powers. 
But that it should have originated among a small 
people like the Hebrews, and have been first pro- 
claimed among them at the very time that they were 
on the road to political ruin, is a fact so contrary 
to the normal operations of the human mind that 
we can not but see in it a special manifestation of 
the presence of the Spirit of God. There is no 
better proof of the inspiration of the Old Testa- 
ment than just this fact.’’ 

So we may say that inspiration, shorn of its 
supernatural implications, whether it be found in 
the Scriptures or elsewhere, is an extraordinary 
manifestation of the Infinite in the lives and works 
of men. And inspiration is a hallmark of man’s 
divinity, for only that which is divine can become 
inspired. 

THE MESSAGE OF SCIENCE 


No more convincing evidence of man’s divinity 
ean be found than that mirrored in the progressive 
revelations of science. That they should not have 
been welcomed as a tremendous aid to the redis- 
covery and reinterpretation of God and the Scrip- 
tures, which must be made in every generation, is 
a tragic blunder of the old theology. The applica- 
tion of scientific methods to Biblical research has 
enabled men to catch the spirit of the times in which 
the Scriptures were written and to understand in 
constantly increasing measure that inextricably 
tangled background of religious experiences out of 
which they grew. And that is all that ‘‘Higher 


THE RECORD OF MAN’S DIVINITY 167 


Criticism’’ means. It is simply the use of intelli- 
gence in the study of the Book of Books. It goes 
back of the documents and determines the chron- 
ological order of the various books, their sources, 
and the social, political and religious atmosphere 
in which they took shape. It breaks down tradi- 
tionalism and prevents the fossilization of religious 
thought. It recognizes that religion is a living, grow- 
ing thing, a constantly evolving product of human 
experience, unfettered by the dead hand of the past, 
vibrant with that creative impulse of the Divine 
Immanence, which never ceases to manifest in every 
form of activity, material or spiritual. Science 
simply pleads for that broad and tolerant interpre- 
tation of Scripture and that zeal for truth which 
have led to such marvelous advances in every other 
field of human knowledge. To the understanding 
of the religious experiences of mankind, it would 
bring an open mind and the spirit of inquiry. 

Nothing else has so immeasurably enlarged our 
conception of God and His stupendous universe as 
have the discoveries of science. The triumphs of 
astronomy, medicine and physical science are as 
much a revelation of the Divine Immanence in the 
soul of man as are the spiritual truths of sacred 
literature. Both link man with the Infinite and for- 
ever establish the fact of his divinity. 


CHAPTER VI 
Gop anp IMMORTALITY 


One approaches the idea of God with hesitation. 
It is the biggest idea that ever confronted the intel- 
ligence of men. It is an idea too great to be grasped 
in more than a small fraction of its infinite signifi- 
cance. In its overwhelming vastness, it bewilders 
thought and defies analysis. Enfolded within it lie 
the hidden life of the universe and the interpreta- 
tion of its meaning. The idea of God has grown 
with the ages. The crude elemental God of the 
savage passed into the tribal Deity, swayed by hu- 
man passions and actuated by human motives, only 
to be succeeded by the prophetic conception of a 
world God of absolute justice and perfect right- 
eousness, and finally to be supplanted by the uni- 
versal Father of the Christian religion and the 
Divine Immanence of scientific philosophy. This 
ever-changing idea of God has needed reinterpre- 
tation in each successive period of intellectual de- 
velopment. It has grown with advancing knowl- 
edge and risen with the evolution of the race to 
constantly higher levels and nobler ideals. The 
savage imagined the presence of spirits in fire and 
water, wind and storm, the lghtning and the 
thunder; the patriarchal tribes worshiped a re- 

168 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 169 


vengeful God of wrath, remorse and repentance; the 
prophets portrayed an austere God of moral law 
whose sovereign sway extended to all men; some 
of the later Psalmists had caught a vision of the 
confident assurance and radiant joy of the God of 
New Testament hopes; in Christ, we see the God- 
idea flower into the conception of the All-Father 
of infinite compassion, mercy and love; while 
science has added the thought of a God whose life 
ensouls the universe and whose ways of action are 
the immutable laws of cosmic evolution. 

These descriptions, however, by no means ex- 
haust the multitudinous ways in which the idea of 
God has found expression. Herbert Spencer, 
materially-minded devotee of science, thought of 
God as a fount of perpetual energy. He summar- 
ized his idea in the following oft-quoted statement: 
‘¢Amid all the mysteries by which we are sur- 
rounded, nothing is more certain than that we are 
ever in the presence of an Infinite and Hternal 
Energy from which all things proceed.’? To the 
poet Wordsworth, God was ‘‘a presence that dis- 
turbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense 
sublime of something far more deeply interfused, 
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the 
round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, 
and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that 
impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
and rolls through all things.’? To Emerson, Chris- 
tian philosopher, God seemed to be a sort of ‘‘Over- . 
Soul,’’ ‘‘the wise silence, the universal beauty, the 
Eternal One,’’ Carlyle, prophet of pessimism, sar- 


170 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


castically characterized the Deity of the Church as 
‘fan absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first 
Sabbath, at the outside of His universe, and ‘see- 
ing it go.’’’ To the mathematical mind of Laplace, 
‘‘the hypothesis of God’’ was wholly unnecessary. 
Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest thinkers of any 
time, said: ‘‘The conception of God involves not 
merely a blindly operating Nature as the eternal 
root of things, but a Supreme Being that shall be 
the author of all things by free and understanding 
action; and it is this conception which alone has 
any interest for us.’’ John Fiske, eminent Ameri- 
can historian, described the Ruler of all things as 
‘‘the infinite and eternal Power that is manifested 
in every pulsation of the universe.’’ And so we 
might continue, but let us turn to the evolution of 
the idea of God, as it has taken shape throughout 
the ages of man on earth. 

Primitive man found himself in the midst of a 
natural environment, often cruel and ruthless, as 
well as sometimes genial and kind. The sense of 
dependence upon this awfulness of Nature, which 
he did not understand, struck its roots deep into 
his soul. Why should the tempest sweep away his 
rude home, or the summer showers water the earth 
and make it bring forth food, or the sun govern the 
coming of day and night? The only cause of things, 
of which he had any experience, lay in his own sense 
of will-power. He knew that he himself by his own 
action could bring things to pass. And so as nat- 
urally as the dawn, there was born in his mind the 
idea that the great physical forces with which he 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 171 


found himself surrounded were animated by intelli- 
gent beings, whom he must combat or whose favor 
he must win. Thus many races of savages became 
Nature-worshipers. It has always been character- 
istic of men to worship that which they could not 
understand. From earliest times, among savage 
tribes the sun has been personified as an archer, 
the clouds have been pictured as immense birds, 
and the tempest as a voracious dragon. 

And then again, another ‘‘superstition’’ has 
played a large part in the development of man’s 
incurably religious nature. No race of men has 
ever been found that did not believe in ghosts. 
Every individual is supposed to have a spirit, a 
wraith, a sort of intangible duplication of himself, 
which during sleep wanders in strange lands and 
after death continues to exist. In sleep this ghost 
converses with dead companions, or joins in the 
hunt and chase. And not only this but beasts and 
even inanimate objects were imagined also to pos- 
sess ghosts, which fact accounts for many of the 
elaborate burial customs of primitive men. With 
such a faith, we may easily see how naturally the 
savage passed to a belief in the god of the lightning, 
the wind, or the fire. Growing directly out of such 
superstitions, too, was the system of ancestor wor- 
ship, which has been characteristic of every race 
of primitive men. The chieftain at death did not 
cease to watch over the fortunes of his tribe. His 
continued favor must at all times be won with ap- 
propriate ceremonies, or defeat and calamity would 
be the portion of his unfaithful followers. As a 


172 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


result of these two marked tendencies, there grew 
up in the primeval world a curious mixture of ances- 
tor worship and Nature worship. 

Accordingly, in those early times, we find a 
belief in many gods. But it is one of the chief 
evidences of man’s divinity that in the course of 
centuries he evolved to the lofty conception of a 
single Supreme Being. When savage tribes were 
beaten in battle, they threw their gods to the 
‘“‘moles and the bats’? and adopted those of the 
conqueror. Thus, there grew the idea of a national 
deity, who, while at first only one among other 
gods, was the greatest of all. But, as the world 
knows, the crowning example of the supremacy of 
one god over others occurred in the spiritual evolu- 
tion of the Hebrew race. Unprecedented as it was, 
in the midst of national calamity, the Hebrew 
prophets, catching a larger vision of the eternal truth 
than had ever before been revealed to mortal men, 
elevated Jehovah to the throne of universal sov- 
ereignty. Up to this time, the existence of other 
gods had been freely recognized, even among the 
leaders of the ‘‘Chosen People.’? But the intense 
feeling of nationality prevailing among the people 
of this gifted race, undismayed by defeat after de- 
feat, finally triumphed in the development of a 
religious movement which was to become the foun- 
dation-stone of Christian civilization. When the 
work of Jesus and St. Paul had made Jehovah the 
Immanent Guide of the universe and the Father of 
all mankind, there emerged for the first time in the 
evolution of the race the transcendent conception of 
a Supreme Ruler, shorn of every limitation. 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 173 


TWO OPPOSING IDEAS OF GOD 

From the days of the early Greeks to the 
present moment, there have been two opposing 
ideas of God. Nature worship predominated 
among the highly imaginative Greek people. Out 
of this tendency to deify the physical forces of 
Nature gradually grew the idea of a single Supreme 
Being whose life is the all-sustaining power of the 
universe and whose ways of action are the fixed 
laws of physical phenomena, or happenings. All 
Nature, all life were made ceaselessly dependent for 
their existence upon this ever-present and im- 
manent source of Divine Power. Theirs was the 
idea of an ‘‘indwelling Deity.’? Out of the past 
grew the future. Implicit in this fundamental 
source of Divine Energy was the evolution of all 
created things. God was not a being apart from 
the universe, but in it every moment and at every 
point of manifestation. Like so many other specu- 
lative notions of this brillant race of thinkers, 
their idea of God, as we shall see, was strikingly 
similar to that of modern science. 

But over against this conception and growing 
out of the primitive form of ancestor worship, 
there developed the idea of an absentee Ruler, whose 
relation to the universe is precisely similar to that 
of a monarch to his kingdom. According to this 
view, the physical happenings of Nature are not 
the ceaseless manifestations of an indwelling Deity, 
but rather the forced effects of an outside power, 
which operates the universe, much as an engineer 
controls his locomotive and train, And this outside 


174 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


power is thought of as a man-like being in the crud- 
est sense. It is simply the ghost idea carried back- 
ward and magnified into a majestic Monarch, who 
ereated a universe of blind mechanical forces and 
set it going, after the fashion of a jeweler who makes 
a clock and winds it up. Only occasionally does 
this lifeless machine need attention from its Divine 
Creator, who sits enthroned far off from His do- 
main, attended by hierarchies of celestial beings. 
This very human Deity was represented as subject 
to passion and caprice, as pleased or angry, as 
repenting of His own acts, as appeased by praise 
and quick to wreak vengeance upon His creatures 
for blasphemous remarks or iniquitous actions. 
His direct action in the physical universe was 
through the suspension of the natural laws govern- 
ing the operation of his inert machine. But, from 
the standpoint of its construction, this was per- 
fectly logical, for the whole mechanism might be 
altered at a moment’s notice to suit the capricious 
will of an autocratic Ruler. 

This latter conception portrays the God of the 
early church. It has profoundly influenced relig- 
ious thinking for nearly two thousand years and 
persists even at the present day. St. Augustine 
with his doctrine of original sin, which pictured 
a crude man-like God cut off from all relation- 
ship with humanity, save through the mediation 
of the church, fastened this wholly imaginative and 
un-Christ-like view upon the thinking of mankind 
for many centuries beyond his time, and it even 
to-day shackles the spiritual growth of a host of 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 175 


earnest Christians. So firmly did this grotesque 
notion of the Deity grip the minds of men that in 
the sculptures, mosaics and stained glass of ¢a- 
thedrals, as well as in the illustrations of pictured 
Bibles, God is represented as busied with the actual 
work of creation. In one instance, He is shown, 
needle in hand, actually sewing together skins of 
animals to make clothes for Adam and Hive. Above 
the tomb of Linneus, the great Swedish naturalist 
of the eighteenth century, in the cathedral of 
Upsala, may be seen the legend of creation carved 
in stone. In a succession of scenes, God, in the 
form of a human being, is represented as perform- 
ing by His own physical exertion the various acts of 
creation, crowning them by the making of man out 
of a hillock of earth and woman from man’s side. 
To hosts of people, all through the Middle Ages and 
after, the universe was literally ‘‘the work of His 
fingers.’? Shorn of their legendary origin, there 
is not a particle of evidence to justify such an- 
thropomorphic, that is man-like, conceptions of 
God. They were born in the prolific imaginations 
of the church fathers, who mistook the poetry of 
Genesis for lteral fact. That hosts of people in 
this scientific age, with an overwhelming abundance 
of evidence to the contrary, should still cling to 
such relics of a superstitious past, is one of the 
outstanding marvels of all time. 

This false idea, too, inbred in the religious 
thinking of men for so many centuries, became one 
of the chief obstacles to the acceptance by the 
church of the spiritual implications of the discov- 


176 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


eries of science. Just as the reign of law extended 
its domain, it was thought that God’s sphere of 
influence vanished. The idea of a Majestic Mon- 
arch, ruling the universe from the outside, had 
gained too strong a hold upon the minds of men. 
Had the conception of an indwelling Deity been 
accepted by the early Church, the world would have 
been spared those tremendous conflicts between 
science and religion which mar the pages of theo- 
logical history and we should not have had to wait 
long centuries for those scientific discoveries which 
have meant so much to the Brose ce: of mankind, 
both spiritual and material. 


THE GOD OF SCIENCE 


The God of science, according to the modern 
view, has also been the product of an evolution of 
thought. Even as early as the time of Socrates, 
men were fond of speculating on the idea of a Great 
Architect, who designed the universe and all its 
parts in accordance with a Divine Plan and then 
so nicely adjusted and correlated the whole mech- 
anism in its manifold workings that the outcome 
was a benevolent order of creation. Each product 
of organic life and each physical fact of Nature 
came to be regarded as distinct ideas of an Intelli- 
gent Being, who thought the universe into exist- 
ence. The inclination of the earth’s axis to the 
plane of its orbit at just the right angle to produce 
the change of seasons and the hundreds of beauti- 
ful adaptations of organisms to their respective 
environments, as well as the numerous other pro- 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY U7 


visions in the economy of Nature for the welfare 
of living things, seemed to prove a fundamental 
purpose back of creation. Even down to the middle 
of the last century this view held sway in scientific 
circles. Beyond question, too, there is a large 
measure of truth in this conception, for unmis- 
takably the earth does seem in its ordering to 
disclose purpose. 

But the belief that this view revealed more than 
a glimpse of the whole truth was rudely disturbed 
by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species 
and the disclosure of what seemed a ruthless 
struggle for existence. A little reflection showed 
that Nature is not always benevolent in her ways. 
There are numerous examples of extreme cruelty 
and the ill-adaptation of organisms to their en- 
vironment. In the light of the stern realities of 
existence, it seemed impossible that God could be 
both benevolent and omnipotent. Gradually the 
idea arose that in some way His power must be 
limited. Within those limits, He had created the 
best possible world. Still in the ideas of a supreme 
intelligence, a divine purpose, and a large measure 
of benevolence, this early God of scientific thinking 
represented a distinct advance over the crude con- 
ception of St. Augustine and his followers. 

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
the work of hundreds of naturalists unfolded for 
the contemplation of men the sublime pageant of 
organic evolution, and with it came the revolution- 
izing idea that the universe has grown like an or- 
ganism. The notion of a machine-like world, made 


178 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


and operated from without, receded into the back- 
ground of scientific thinking. The indwelling 
Deity of the Greek philosophers came to the fore 
once more. A Divine Immanence was believed to 
ensoul the universe. Creation began to be thought 
of as a ceaseless process, rather than a product. It 
was no longer a lifeless static thing. God, who had 
been banished by Christian thinking to the out- 
skirts of the universe, where He sat in solitary 
grandeur, gloomily contemplating the dissolution of 
His power as the encroachments of natural law 
constantly pushed Him farther and farther into the 
background, was reinstated as the Immanent and 
Kternal Guide of all created things. The idea of an 
absentee God was shattered. The universe became 
the ceaseless expression of His thought, natural 
laws His ways of action, and religion His life in the 
souls of men. The uniformity of Nature became as 
axiomatic as the mathematical truths of reason. 
Divine caprice became a thing of the imaginative 
past. Miracle and the consequent arbitrary inter- 
ference with natural law became unthinkable 
violations of the divine nature. The world became 
a living, throbbing organism, whose growth is as 
natural as that of the springtime violet. Implicit 
in this life informing all creation is the personality 
of the human spirit, which differs from Divine Per- 
sonality only in degree. Up to the present point 
of evolution, this personality is the flower of cre- 
ation, and what infinite possibilities it may yet 
unfold, only the future ages can disclose. 

It is true, the first effect of this new scientific 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 179 


background was a wave of skepticism. For a time 
it seemed to many men of science that physical 
forces and natural laws eliminated all necessity for 
God. While probably relatively few became con- 
firmed atheists, many followed Huxley into the 
camp of agnosticism, neither giving nor withhold- 
ing assent to belief in a Supreme Being. But 
gradually the utter inadequacy of blind chance and 
unintelligent forces to account for a universe of 
perfect law and order asserted itself, and the pen- 
dulum began to swing in the opposite direction. 
Critical thought developed the fundamental truth 
that cosmic laws imply a Divine Lawgiver. God 
became as necessary to science as He had been to 
theology. 

Many discoveries of science have tended to con- 
firm this belief in an Immanent Being, whose life 
is the soul of the universe. The law of gravitation 
has extended its sway to the distant stars. The 
spectroscope has disclosed in nebule and giant suns 
the same elements that exist in the earth. Our 
kinship has been established with the countless 
other members of the ‘‘heavenly hosts.’’ The 
boundless ether seems to bind the universe in cos- 
mic unity. Our knowledge of the atoms, with their 
miniature solar systems of revolving electrons 
moving with the same marvelous precision as ob- 
tains in the celestial spaces, bespeaks a reign of 
perfect law, extending from the infinitesimally 
small to the infinitely great. The resolution of 
matter into vibrating points of energy comes very 
close to establishing a fundamental relationship be- 


180 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


tween the material and the spiritual. Every fiber 
of the universe appears to be aquiver with some 
subtle form of energy, or life. The law of evolu- 
tion, extending as we believe from the formless 
chaos of the fire mist through nebule and solar 
systems to the smallest of living organisms, links 
the universe in one vast system of interrelated parts. 

Blind chance can not account for the creation 
and maintenance of such a universe. No Ruler 
external to the system could coordinate its infin- 
itely numerous processes in perfect harmony and 
unceasingly supply its sustaining energy. Only 
a God in whose life the universe exists and moves 
and has its being is equal to so stupendous a task. 
And such a conception is the only one that can 
satisfy the demands of our human understanding. 
Yet God must be more than this. He must not 
only be the eternal source and all-sustaining cre- 
ative power of the physical universe, but He must 
supply with His spiritual presence our moral, re- 
ligious and esthetic ideals. All the nobility of 
character, all the fine qualities of the human spirit, 
and all the wealth of love which have flowered in the 
evolution of the soul of man must have had their 
origin in Him, The very fact that we possess these 
God-like qualities of heart and mind proves that 
they are also attributes in infinitely larger degree 
of Him in whose image we are created. A funda- 
mental teaching of science asserts that there can 
be no effect without an adequate cause. The per- 
sonality of man must, then, find its counterpart in 
that larger Personality which brought it into being. 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 181 


As Sir Oliver Lodge says, ‘‘I will not believe that 
it is given to- man to have thoughts, nobler or 
loftier, than the real truth of things.’’ A stream 
can rise no higher than its source. Implicit within 
the God of life must be all the riches of human 
experience. Otherwise, they never could have 
found expression. That is the clear teaching of 
science. The God of science is more than the ‘‘In- 
finite and Eternal Energy’’ of Herbert Spencer. 
Not only must we find in Him the origin of nebule 
and solar systems, physical forces and natural laws, 
but also in overflowing measure the divinity of the 
human spirit. 

And science would be false to its own basic prin- 
ciples and to its own interpretation of natural 
phenomena, did it deny the existence of God alto- 
gether. The crass materialism which engulfed the 
scientific thinking of a half-century ago has largely 
passed. We see about us a universe of perfect law 
and order. It is an intelligible universe. We can 
unravel many of its mysteries. We can discover 
its laws of action, and even put them down in 
mathematical formule of absolute precision. We 
can harness its forces to serve our needs. Its hid- 
den secrets yield their meanings to our persistent 
search for truth. Its minutest units become to the 
scientific understanding marvelous systems of re- 
volving electrons. When we sweep its heavens with 
our telescope, we exclaim with Kepler, ‘‘O God, I 
think Thy thoughts after Thee.’? And the universe 
is reasonable. It is a rational universe. It is 
amenable to human understanding. It is never ca- 


182 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


pricious. It always acts in the same way. It is 
always dependable and law-abiding. Given in the 
laboratory or elsewhere a particular set of condi- 
tions, and the result is invariably the same. To a 
certain question, regardless of when or where it 
may be asked, Nature never fails to give the same 
undeviating answer. And so science has come to 
live by faith. It has faith in the integrity of the 
universe. Out of this faith has grown the funda- 
mental assumption, that whatever is necessary to 
the mind’s understanding of natural phenomena is 
necessary to the phenomena themselves. 

But what has this to do with our belief in God? 
Simply this: that an understandable universe of law 
and order, a universe that is amenable to our finite 
intelligence, must have back of it a Divine Intelli- 
gence, the accomplishment of whose Purposes 
manifests itself in creation and whose ways of 
thinking are the immutable laws which govern the 
occurrence of natural phenomena. An intelligible 
universe could never proceed from a non-intelligent 
source. Without Divine Intelligence as the basis 
and never-ceasing source of creation, this world 
would be an insoluble riddle. We should never be 
able to find any meaning in it. And the very fact 
that we do find meaning is proof eternal that God 
exists. 

Suppose we were to cut each separate word 
from this page, stir them all up, and put them to- 
gether hit-and-miss fashion, the meaning would be 
utterly gone. There would be words, but no 
thought. This universe is a thought-creation, and 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 183 


so is every other creation. The sculptor sees the 
statue in the unhewn block of marble, before he 
strikes a blow. Every painting is a_ thought- 
creation transferred to canvas. Poetry and music 
are divine expressions of the human soul. Inven- 
tions are masterpieces of creative thought. Let us 
take a complicated machine. The purpose of every 
wheel and lever, of every part to the minutest de- 
tail, existed in thought before it was materialized in 
bronze or steel. Otherwise, we should find no 
meaning in it. It would be out of harmony with 
the fundamental principles of mechanics. Because 
no thought was back of it, it would be an eternal 
enigma. And so with the universe. It is a product 
of divine thought. 

And then again, the scientist assumes an ether, 
because it is incomprehensible that light and heat 
can traverse the immeasurable distances of space 
without something in which to travel. But we shall 
never get any closer to proving its existence than 
just this thought necessity. The stuff is wholly 
elusive, completely intangible. It does not respond 
to any of our senses, and yet few scientists doubt 
its existence. We can not explain the observed 
facts of physical phenomena without assuming that 
it does. No person ever saw an atom or a molecule. 
Yet these units of chemical and physical action are 
as real as the cobble stones beneath our feet. We 
can not understand the behavior of matter without 
calling them into ‘‘being.’’ Astronomers could not 
explain the deviations in the path of the planet 
Uranus without supposing the presence of a there- 


184 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


tofore unknown planet having a certain definite 
orbit about the sun and a certain mass. Its 
discovery became a mathematical certainty, and 
was achieved almost immediately upon the comple- 
tion by Leverrier of the necessary calculation. Cer- 
tain fossil bones brought to Cuvier demanded for 
their explanation a peculiar type of prehistoric 
animal, and an extinct species of the elephant be- 
came a fact of the geologic past. 

Whatever the facts of scientific observation ré- 
quire for their explanation become essential parts 
of the universe. That is the rule of science, and 
we may apply it with equal force to the problem 
of God. Without Him, the origin of our universe 
and its perpetual maintenance become unintelligible 
mysteries. Even if the human soul did not demand 
His existence for the satisfaction of its divine 
aspirations, science would make Him a rational 
necessity. 

No, science does not dethroné God. Let us blot 
from our minds the thought that scientific dis- 
covery has made necessary the substitution of blind 
force or natural laws for a Supreme Being. God 
is just as essential to the true scientist as He is to 
the theologian, But in place of the grotesque con- 
ception of an enlarged man-like Deity, ruling the 
universe like an absentee landlord, science puts 
the Divine Immanence of an Infinite Intelligence, 
that always and everywhere manifests itself in 
progressive creation. The God of theology is at 
absolute variance with the divine revelations of the 
searchers after the hidden truths of the universe. 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 185 


To such a Deity, the apostles of science can not sub- 
scribe. Only a Divine Being who embodies in 
transcendent degree every manifestation of the 
universe, material or spiritual, here or at the re- 
motest point of the celestial spaces, can satisfy 
alike the demands of reason and the esthetic ideals 
of the human spirit. 


IMMORTALITY 


Closely associated with the idea of God is that 
of immortality. These are the two biggest ideas 
that,ever engaged the thought of men. The whence 
and the whither of life,—these are the eternal 
mysteries which philosophers in every age have 
sought to fathom. As to the whence of life, may 
there not be truth in the lines of Wordsworth: 


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting 

And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home. 


And as to the whither of life, we instinctively 
feel the truth expressed in the following lines: 


Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 

And thou hast made him: thou art just. 


Let us trace for a moment the development of 
man’s belief in an immortal soul, The origin of 


186 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


this belief takes us back to the primitivé times of 
our prehistoric ancestry. Its beginning was a 
lowly one, but for just that reason the steady evolu- 
tion of this fundamental idea into the beautiful 
concept of modern Christian faith is one of the most 
notable evidences of man’s divinity. Quite likely 
belief in a soul and its continued existence after 
death arose from the phenomena of dreams. As 
the mind of the savage wandered in sleep taking 
him possibly to distant lands and other hunting- 
grounds, there grew the idea of another self, a 
ghost, a spirit, which was able to leave the physical 
body, and, free as air, to roam the earth at will. 
And then again, when the slain chieftain or de- 
parted friends seemed to appear in dreams to 
converse with him, the spirits of the dead, to his 
simple faith, continued to exist, possessed of all the 
faculties belonging to them here. Fear of death, 
too, was doubtless an important factor in the origin 
of this faith. This realm of shadows, the abode of 
departed spirits, was variously pictured. The 
Peruvians and Mexicans placed it in the sun; the 
American Indians imagined a happy hunting- 
ground; the Polynesians regarded the moon as the 
home of the dead; the Finns and Australians 
pictured a distant island; while the Egyptians, 
Greeks, Romans and Hebrews located the land of 
shades in a subterranean cavern, a dismal place 
utterly devoid of the joy of living. 

The Hebrew religion, in its beginning, had no 
certain hope of immortality. The following passage 
from Ecclesiastes states the early conviction of the 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY | 187 


race in which faith in life eternal was to reach 
its most glorious conception: ‘‘A living dog is 
better than a dead lion. For the living know that 
they shall die: but the dead know not anything, 
neither have they any more a reward; for the 
memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and 
their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; 
neither have they any more a portion for ever in 
anything that is done under the sun.’’ And again: 
‘‘Wor that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth 
beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one 
dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one 
breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a 
beast; for all is vanity.’’ 

Sheol, the shadowy dwelling-place of the He- 
brew dead, was variously described as a land of 
‘“destruction,’’ ‘‘forgetfulness,’’ or ‘‘silence.’’? But 
all the world knows how this idea of the life after 
death gradually evolved through the later psalmists 
and the New Testament writers into the radiant 
visions of early Christian hopes. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 


Do the teachings of science have any bearing 
upon the ages-old belief in the immortality of the 
human spirit? Do they shed any new light upon 
a question which forever returns to perplex the 
minds of men? Of course science, in its present 
state of development, can neither prove nor dis- 
prove the future existence of the soul. It can not 
even produce evidence to support the hypothesis 
that man has a soul. In the realms of the dead, 


188 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


the instruments of science are useless. Still, the 
achievements of modern science have disclosed so 
many mysteries of the universe that they would 
seem to promise hope of one day drawing aside 
the veil which separates the living from the dead. 
Indeed, the scientific study of personality is reveal- 
ing the existence of vast realms of unexplored 
possibilities lying beyond the frontiers of human 
consciousness. Telépathy, clairvoyance, hypno- 
tism, the mysterious powers of the subconscious 
mind,—these are enchanting kingdoms but awaiting 
the conquest of science. They hint at hidden re- 
sources of the soul, of illimitable extent and 
immense significance. We instinctively feel that 
the race stands upon the threshold of a new era, 
a fresh departure in its evolution, of which the 
psychical development of men may be the chief 
achievement. But let us see what clues the dis- 
coveries of science offer, even to-day, for a better 
understanding of the problem of eternal life. 

So firmly do the facts of science grip the mind 
that one often comes to believe only in the realities 
of material existence. So illusive and intangible 
have the properties of the spirit seemed in com- 
parison that the existence of a spiritual realm has 
been regarded largely as a matter of speculation. 
But how intangible likewise have the realities of 
the scientific world become, the discoveries of the 
last half-century have made exceedingly apparent. 
Formerly we had notions of hard indestructible 
entities called atoms. Now we have replaced these 
chemical units with points of energy, known as 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 189 


electrons and moving with tremendous velocities in 
orbits about centers of positive electrification. The 
energy manifest in X-Rays is able to penetrate 
opaque matter. Intangible ether waves girdle the 
earth with the voice of music and intelligible 
thought. The vast reservoirs of sub-atomic energy, 
as revealed in the disruption of radium atoms, have 
created visions of inexhaustible reserves of natural 
power. Radioactivity, too, has brought the dream 
of the alchemist to pass. The older facts of gravi- 
tation, magnetism, electricity, chemical affinity and 
the all-pervading ether of space, utterly intangible 
in every instance, have shattered past the possi- 
bility of reconstruction the material world of earlier 
science. The earth beneath our feet and the air 
we breathe have resolved themselves into forms of 
energy as immaterial as the spirits of departed 
friends. To the challenge, ‘‘Show me a single atom 
which has ever been changed from its eternal form 
or any proof whatever of a world of immaterial 
being,’’ science has an answer overflowing with an 
abundance of the most positive evidence. ‘The 
hard matter-of-fact realities of the physical uni- 
verse of yesterday are gone. All is elusive. 

We are entirely ignorant of the real nature of 
the physical forces of the universe. What are 
gravitation and chemical affinity, magnetism and 
electricity, heat and light? Have we any more 
knowledge, in the last analysis, of these physical 
realities than we have of the immaterial human 
spirit? What could be more mysterious about the 
existence of spirit than about that of the ether? 


190 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


The ether is absolutely immaterial. We can not 
perceive it with any of the senses. Its properties, 
entirely deduced by processes of reasoning, seem, to 
the uninitiated at least, even more fantastical than 
do those of spirit. Just imagine an individual, a 
spirit if you please, consisting of ether. He would 
be invisible, utterly beyond apprehension by any 
of the physical senses, capable of moving with the 
velocity of light, immune alike to the intense heat 
of the sun and the absolute cold of interplanetary 
space, and altogether ghost-like in characteristics. 
Is the supersensual world of ether and electrons and 
subatomic energy any more real than the realm of 
spirit? Is the idea of a human soul, that which 
gives to personality its only reality, any more 
marvelous or improbable than the modern concep- 
tion of a planetary atom and its wealth of invisible 
forces? In speaking of this new knowledge, Sir 
William Crookes said: ‘‘We have actually touched 
the borderland where matter and energy seem to 
merge into one another—the shadowy realm be- 
tween the known and the unknown. I venture to 
think the greatest scientific problems of the future 
will find their solution in this borderland, and even 
beyond. Here, it seems to me, lie ultimate realities, 
subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.’’ 

What ultimate reality could be more significant 
than the existence and nature of the human soul? 
Do not the scientific discoveries of the past and 
the seemingly illimitable possibilities of this border- 
land of ultimate knowledge give ground for faith 
that, somewhere, somehow in the economy of this 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 191 


vast universe, there is provision for the immortality 
of the spirit? 

But science offers a far more significant an- 
alogy for belief in the immortality of the soul. One 
of its fundamental laws is that of the Conservation 
of Energy: energy can neither be created nor de- 
stroyed but it can be changed from one form to 
another. The energy of falling water turns the 
armature of a dynamo and is converted into elec- 
tricity, which in turn produces heat, light and 
motion. If all the energy in each transformation is 
measured, including that which is wasted, the sum 
total will be found to equal the quantity contained 
in the original energy of the falling water. It is 
neither more nor less. The sum total of energy 
in the universe is constant. Now does it not seem 
equally reasonable to suppose that there is also 
a conservation of spiritual energy? Why should 
this other form of energy, which seems to be the 
most vital thing in the universe, an energy without 
which life itself would be impossible, suffer anni- 
hilation any more than the physical energy which 
it uses? If heat, light and electricity are indes- 
tructible, may it not be that personality, the form 
of energy through which all others is manifest, is 
equally beyond the reach of destruction? Indeed, 
it would be most unreasonable to assume other- 
wise. The annihilation of spiritual energy would 
constitute a violation of the order of the universe 
so gross as to be utterly unthinkable. Whether or 
not personal identity, that is the individuality of 
the human spirit, persists, science can not say. The 


192 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


whole trend of scientific knowledge supports the 
hypothesis of survival, but further than that it 
can not go. 

Let us approach this problem from another 
point of the scientific compass. Does not the un- 
doubted fact of evolution have any significance for 
belief in the persistence of the human spirit? Even 
Darwin said, ‘‘It is an intolerable thought that man 
and all other sentient beings are doomed to com- 
plete annihilation, after such long-continued slow 
progress.’’ Why should a progress of infinite 
magnitude, beginning in the fire mist and continu- 
ing through nebule and solar systems to the 
production of a habitable planet, flower in organic 
life and evolve through countless ages of pain and 
toil into the personality of the human spirit, only 
to undergo complete dissolution when the spirit 
passes from the physical realm? Does such an end 
seem consistent with the divine harmony of the 
universe? Surely there is some more worth-while 
goal for the actors in this drama of eternity. Out 
of the strife and struggle, turmoil and agony, de- 
feat and victory of the infinite past there must be 
some gains to be preserved. Why should not life 
with its amazing powers of persistence run on for- 
ever? Has man come thus far only to be destined 
to go no farther? Should human personality, 
bought at such frightful costs, in a moment cease 
to be? The mind recoils from such a possibility. 
For what purpose do men live for one small frac- 
fion of a cosmic moment, if annihilation awaits 
them at its close? No, the evolution of life can 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 193 


never end any more than can the transformation of 
physical energy. The reasonableness of the uni- 
verse, as we know it, makes impossible any other 
conclusion. Immortality is as much a rational 
necessity for the destiny of creation as God is for 
its beginning. 

Deep in the soul of man is implanted the germ 
of immortality. It was present in the cave man. 
Its roots have sunk deeper and deeper with the 
lapse of time. All the learning of the ages has not 
been able to uproot it. Skepticism avails nothing 
against it. Although a man may reject all religion, 
he still clings to the hope of immortality. Its grip 
can not be shaken off. It has been of tremendous 
influence in shaping the destiny of civilization. 
Without it life would lose its meaning and death 
become the blind alley of human endeavor. It is 
contrary to all the teachings of science that a 
latent factor of such vast import to the evolution 
of physical or spiritual phenomena should be but 
a fiction of the imagination. It does not spring 
from nothing and proceed toward a purposeless 
goal. It has some counterpart in reality commen- 
surate with its immense significance to the realm 
in which it operates. If for no other reason, we 
might assert with perfect confidence our belief in 
immortality. 

So far as observation goes, there are no aspira- 
tions of the human spirit which do not find their 
means of satisfaction. The desire for justice, the 
love of beauty, poetry and music,—these have come 
to fruition in systems of jurisprudence, works of 


194 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


art, the literature of every age and the compositions 
of the masters. Men wished to lighten the drudgery 
of human toil, and the principles of mechanics 
awaited their application. They sought increased 
power for the performance of the world’s work, and 
steam became the burden-bearer of the race. At 
length there emerged a desire to annihilate space, 
and the telegraph, the telephone and radio have met 
the need. Certain venturesome spirits audaciously 
believed in the possibility of soaring like the birds, 
and the airplane sprang into being. The desire to 
alleviate human suffering has flowered in the mir- 
acles of preventive medicine and modern surgery. 
From time immemorial men have longed for a fuller 
knowledge of the heavens, and the telescope and the 
spectroscope have made them as an open book. In 
imagination they pictured the miniature worlds of 
the infinitesimally small, and to-day a wealth of 
evidence reveals the truth. Columbus had a vision 
of an unknown continent, and he found it beyond the 
seas. Along a thousand paths of scientific dis- 
covery, the searchers after the hidden mysteries of 
the universe have justified the supreme faith of the 
human spirit in the existence of the unseen. Do 
not these conquests of faith give abundant ground 
for the conviction that the yearning of the soul for 
life everlasting will not find itself unfulfilled? 
The progress and spirit of scientific discovery 
are utterly opposed to the philosophy of modern 
pessimism which teaches that ‘‘man is a mere acci- 
dent,’’ ‘‘immortality is a sheer illusion,’’ ‘‘there is 
practically no evidence for the existence of God,’’ 


GOD AND IMMORTALITY 195 


‘religion is primarily a defense mecnanism,’’ ‘‘the 
freedom of the will has been knocked into a cocked 
hat,’’ ‘‘such things as the soul, consciousness, God 
and immortality are merely mistakes of the older 
psychology,’’ and that life is possibly but ‘‘a fleet- 
ing moment of music, warmth and color between two 
eternities of silence.’’ Scientific revelations in 
their broad aspects give no justification for such 
gloomy views of the universe and the destiny of the 
race. 

The spiritual driving power of civilization still 
remains unimpaired. Faith in God and immortality, 
reinforced by three centuries of scientific achieve- 
ment, is to-day the most precious legacy of the past 
and the eternal hope of the future. 


CHAPTER VII 
ScIENCE AND THE CHURCH 


Way should men ever have thought that the 
dissemination of knowledge and the progressive un- 
veiling of the illimitable mysteries of this vast uni- 
verse of matter, energy and life would diminish the 
glory of the Infinite or weaken Christian faith? 
How can a fuller understanding of the wide areas 
of the unexplored realities of existence restrict the 
spiritual evolution of mankind? Why should we 
ephemeral creatures of but a fraction of a cosmic 
moment start with the utterly false assumption that 
there is no mystery about creation? What right 
has any body of finite beings to conclude that there 
is nothing more to be known than what was imagined 
by infant peoples in the ages of ignorance and super- 
stition? Does any one really believe that any man- 
made literature, however inspired its authors may 
have been, contains more than the minutest frag- 
ment of what ultimately may be unfolded? Has 
knowledge become static? Is it even yet a crime to 
face the future with an inquiring mind? Shall any 
of us to-day place ourselves in the same class with 
those who feared to look through Galileo’s telescope, 
lest they might perceive unwelcome truth? Is a 
religious faith founded upon such a basis a stable 

196 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 197 


structure? Is it fit for the twenticth century and 
after? Should it be a chief function of the apostles 
of the living truth to combat the spread of learning? 
Does an interpretation of the Scriptures and of 
Nature which places a premium upon ignorance and 
capitalizes so far as possible the credulity of men 
sound the key-note of forward-looking minds? Why 
should we not move onward into the open spaces 
of a wider truth and climb upward to the sunlit 
heights of a larger understanding? Do we still 
cling to the belief of the early church that it is 
wicked to pry into God’s secrets? Does the Infinite 
really require the guardian care of finite beings? 
Are we not yet big enough to know how utterly 
futile are the puny attempts of any group of men, 
however zealous they may be for their conception 
of the right, to stay the triumphal progress of God’s 
eternal truth? Will men never realize that ‘‘the 
truth is mighty and it will prevail’’? Let us then 
open wide the floodgates of the great ocean of 
knowledge as rapidly as the finite powers of human 
ingenuity can do it. Let us forever cease to oppose 
that clearer vision, that deeper insight, that larger 
understanding that make both for righteousness and 
the progressive evolution of mankind. 

And to the time-honored question, ‘*‘Why bother 
about such matters?’’ the answer is that the acqui- 
sition of knowledge concerning the universe of 
which we are a part and the development of the 
human intellect are possibly among the supreme 
objects of the evolution of the race. Had all men 
persisted in their comfortable grooves of mental 


198 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


security, there never would have been a Roger 
Bacon, a Galileo, a Martin Luther, a Newton, a 
Faraday, a Shakespeare, or an Abraham Lincoln. 
Because such men had the courage to loose the fet- 
ters which bound them to the traditional past and 
to reject the false doctrine that the pursuit of truth 
is an illegitimate calling of mortal men, the world 
has moved out of the dark shadows of the Middle 
Ages and into the Renaissance of learning and the 
bright morning of scientific achievement. The men- 
tal status of the race can not stand still. We of 
to-day must determine whether or not a fossiliza- 
tion of intellectual and spiritual ideals shall not 
only arrest the tide of human progress, but, for the 
time being, turn it backward in its course. 


THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 


The church, as she has done often before in her 
history, stands at the cross-roads. Shall that large 
and growing element within her folds which wel- 
comes with joy every fresh revelation of God’s 
truth, in whatever form it may come, achieve the 
leadership of the spiritual forces of mankind, or 
shall those worshipers of a sacred past, whose faces 
are perpetually turned away from the bright sun- 
light of advancing knowledge, gain a temporary 
victory for reaction, even as they did in the days of 
Galileo? That is the vital question which confronts 
the church to-day and upon whose answer depends 
much of the future of Christian civilization. We 
ean not evade it. The issue has been raised, and the 
answer must be forthcoming. Shall it be dictated 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 199 


by enlightened Christian leadership, or shall that 
group of misguided but tremendously earnest souls 
whose appreciation of science and the intellectual 
achievements of modern scholarship touches close 
to the zero mark be permitted to shackle in large 
measure the progress of spiritual development for 
a generation yet to come? It is the same centuries- 
old question which has confronted the church ever 
since the Fathers of the Christian Faith, noble men, 
bred in the minds of ignorant and docile people the 
utterly false conviction that God, once and for all, 
revealed in the sacred Scriptures the whole truth 
about our universe. 

Why can not the church make use of truth in 
any form? Does it not all emanate from God? Is 
it not inconceivable that He would allow men to come 
into possession of knowledge which would interfere 
with their spiritual welfare? If the findings of 
Christian scholarship have traced to their legendary 
origins many of the poetic stories of Genesis, can it 
possibly further the cause of Christ to insist upon 
them as literal truth, or to make dogmatic belief 
in them essential to the supposed salvation of the 
soul? Have not too many such essential beliefs 
passed by the boards to give pause to such insistence 
to-day? If the undoubted facts of scientific inves- 
tigation have demonstrated the truth of evolution 
and traced man’s ancestry to a lowly origin, must 
we not accept them as fresh revelations of God’s 
universe? Must we not recognize that belief in the 
divinely dictated authorship of the Biblical account 
was never more than an assumption? Can we not 


200 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


welcome these discoveries as giving us a larger 
knowledge of God’s ways of working,—a glimpse, 
as it were, into His workshop? Why not accept this 
new accession of divine insight and turn it to the 
glory of Him whose life is the soul of the universe? 
Are Christian theologians any more sure to-day of 
the falsity of evolution than they were three hun- 
dred years ago of the fallacy of the Copernican 
theory of the heavens? Taking a lesson from the 
chapter of its experience in the ‘‘near antiquity’’ of 
the seventeenth century, should not the church wel- 
come the opportunity to escape a repetition of its 
tragic blunder in opposing the classic revelations of 
the new astronomy? Just as the beauties of the 
new heavens and their awe-inspiring mysteries have 
now become one of the chief glories of the God of 
Christian theology, may it not be that ere long the 
church as a unit will place the majestic pageant of 
evolution, sweeping as it does across the infinite 
reaches of time, alongside of the revelations of 
Copernicus and Galileo, as one of the most notable 
evidences of a divine order in the universe? And, 
when we speak of the church, we must freely and 
gladly concede that large numbers of its leaders are 
among the most devoted apostles of truth, from 
whatever source, that have ever graced the ranks 
of learning. 

A most timely utterance of The Outlook, in com- 
menting just now upon the visit to the United States 
of Dean Inge, of St. Paul’s Cathedral, says: ‘‘ What 
is significant about Dean Inge’s visit is not so much 
his views about the relative value of Italian Ameri- 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 201 


cans and Americans of native stock, not even his com- 
ments upon the beauty of our sky-scrapers or of our 
New England villages; what is really significant is 
the message that he gives as from an Kinglishman 
of conservative mind socially who thinks in terms 
of religious liberalism. The real message that we 
ought to and need to hold fast to in this country is 
that which has been reported again and again—that 
there is and can be no conflict between two kinds of 
truth, that religion and science are not essentially at 
swords’ points. The real quarrel is between science 
and theological theories. When the dean says that 
Christ could not have meant His followers to shut 
their eyes to any truth, he brings a message which 
is needed more in so-called liberal America than it 
is in so-called conservative England. If the church 
is not to identify itself with theories doomed to 
become as antiquated as astrology and alchemy, it 
must adjust its theories of religion to such new 
knowledge as has become as well established as the 
law of gravitation. . . . Dean Inge’s visit to this 
country has done a great service by spreading 
through the press by means of the very pestiferous 
reporters whom he wishes would let him alone this 
elementary truth that in the universe we have a 
revelation of God which the scientist is studying and 
understanding, and that there is no authority in 
religion except that which ultimately speaks through 
the faith of the individual.”’ 

Sooner or later the church as a whole must ac- 
cept this broad view. There is no authority any- 
where to constrain a man to believe anything which 


202 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


his own interpretation of God and Nature does not 
lead him to accept. Attempts to suppress the truth, 
or even what is regarded as untruth, will never 
avail anything. History is full of such tragic blun- 
ders. Has the church as a whole not yet learned 
the lesson? And was there ever a more fallacious 
view than that the cause of religion can be served 
by clinging to outworn beliefs which have been 
shown to be utterly false? Is the church blind to 
the handwriting on the wall? Are there any in 
authority who can not see that a generation that is 
rapidly coming to believe in the triumphant truth 
of evolution can no longer be nurtured on the myth- 
ical Story of Creation found in Genesis, especially 
when it is well known that the origin of that story 
has been traced to pagan literature? If a scien- 
tifically trained people rejects the idea of miracles, 
which violate the natural order of the universe and 
which originated in an age of superstition and igno- 
rance when belief in ‘‘signs and wonders”’ was rife 
among men, would it not be the part of wisdom 
not to stress that idea? More light, not less, wider 
vistas for the soul, larger knowledge, deeper insight, 
clearer understanding,—these are the vitalizing in- 
fluences which the church must make her own, if she 
is not to lose her grip on the minds of men. 

Do empty pews and the wide-spread religious 
unrest, which is sweeping the country, teach noth- 
ing? If the everlasting truths of religion need re- 
interpretation in a new age to meet new view- 
points and larger knowledge, let the church seize 
the opportunity gladly and march in the vanguard 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 203 


of the spiritual renaissance. As Doctor Fosdick 
says in his wonderfully inspiring book, The Modern 
Use of the Bible, ‘If there are fresh things to learn 
concerning the physical universe, let us have them, 
that we may find a deeper meaning when we say, 
‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ If there 
are new ways of approaching men’s minds, new 
methods of argument and apologetic, let us have 
them and not fight like fools with bows and arrows 
at Verdun, when the One we are fighting for is so 
worthy of the best that we can do. If there are new 
powers disclosed by science, let us have them and 
put them at the disposal of the Lord of life to make 
our service more efficient! All that we know at the 
service of the Highest that we know—that is the 
ideal!’’* 

And then again does not the church realize that 
it is losing its vital contact with young minds when 
it clings to traditional religious view-points which 
have been utterly discredited by the teachings of 
modern science? How infantile in the extreme and 
how contrary to the lesson written large in the 
wrecks of theological dogma in the past to attempt 
to prevent the spread of the truth! Here is the 
tremendous opportunity of the church. Let her 
show that she is abreast of the times. Let her take 
the lead in appropriating to the service of God each 
fresh revelation of divine truth. Let her prophets, 
like those of old, catch the vision of a living God, 
who has never ceased to be the Immanent Source 
and Guide of the universe, always unfolding in ever- 


*The Macmillan Company, 1924. 


904 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


increasing measure the meaning and purpose of the 
ways of life and creation. Let her break away from 
the paralyzing traditionalism of a fossilized past. 
Only by showing in unmistakable terms that her 
apostles believe in a God who works in the living 
present, here and now, and by methods never dif- 
fering essentially in the past from those in opera- 
tion to-day, can she retain her hold upon the youth 
of this and other lands. The irrefutable teachings 
of science have made too indelible an impression 
upon the minds of the rising generation. It is idle 
to shut one’s eyes to them and utterly futile to 
attempt to stay the mighty onward sweep of their 
conquest. Why should any portion of the church 
leadership persist in remaining blind to the over- 
shadowing significance of these discoveries of 
science? Why should it not welcome them whole- 
heartedly as a fresh revelation in modern times of 
the Divine Immanence? Only thus can the church 
deserve and win the respect and loyal confidence of 
those young people who are to be the intellectual 
leaders of the coming generation. 

The church did not hesitate to appropriate the 
music of Bach, Beethoven and Handel, the painting 
of Cimabue, Raphael and Michelangelo, and the new 
Gothic architecture for the service of religion. The 
discoveries of science are no less an unfolding of 
the Divine. They are equally worthy of God- 
service. If the church would gain that new acces- 
sion of spiritual power of which she stands so 
desperately in need, let her seize upon this new 
knowledge, as a drowning man would a life-buoy. 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 205 


Its rejection means ultimate suicide for the church 
in her present form, for no organization can endure 
which opposes the progress of truth. The church 
can not continue to deny the validity of the rapidly 
growing wealth of scientific knowledge and survive. 
The immense spiritual significance of these epoch- 
making researches must be freely accepted, or 
nothing will be left to theology but the empty husks 
of a worn-out traditionalism. Again we say, the 
church stands at the cross-roads. 


THE HISTORICAL ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH 


A review of the past often affords the surest key 
to the solution of present difficulties. We have 
already indicated in other pages much of the his- 
torical attitude of the church with regard to the 
discoveries of physical science, but a review at this 
point may be helpful. 

The early fathers of the church cherished the 
most profound belief in the literal truth of the 
Scriptures. In their view, this sacred literature 
revealed all that was to be known regarding the 
universe and the origin of life. The Bible was not 
only a spiritual guide, but a text-book of geography 
and science as well. Every word was either dic- 
tated by God, or directly inspired of Him. There 
was not an error within its covers, and there was no 
possibility of discovering any truth which its pages 
did not reveal. It was the duty of all men to accept 
with unquestioning obedience its teachings and their 
interpretation by the church as final in all matters, 
both spiritual and material, In the words of St. 


206 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Augustine, ‘‘Nothing is to be accepted save on the 
authority of Scripture, since greater is that au- 
thority than all the powers of the human mind.’’ 
And strange as it may seem, in the face of a host 
of the most revolutionizing discoveries of an ever- 
growing science to the contrary, that was the atti- 
tude of the church as a whole, both Protestant and 
Catholic, almost down to the twentieth century. 
And it is the official policy of a large proportion of 
Christian leaders even at the present moment. 

And then, too, the belief of the early church, as 
derived from the New Testament, regarded the end 
of the world as near at hand. With the final judg- 
ment rapidly approaching, the saving of souls was 
the only consideration worthy of men. All else was 
worse than folly. This withering attitude of the 
church arrested the normal development of science 
for more than fifteen hundred years. Pope Greg- 
ory VII, in the eleventh century, declared all 
physical sciences to be ‘‘absurdities’’ and ‘‘fool- 
eries.’’? In the twelfth century, St. Thomas Aquinas 
used his powerful influence to bring science, which 
was even then making a beginning of the experi- 
mental method, entirely under theological control. 
The Scriptures, too, with theological sanction were 
made the basis for the practise of magic. In the 
following century, Roger Bacon, the first great 
apostle of experimental science, was imprisoned for 
fourteen years by the ecclesiastical authorities and 
otherwise relentlessly persecuted because he had 
sought to give a rational, rather than a super- 
natural, explanation of natural phenomena. Be- 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 207 


eause for the first time he showed a correct 
understanding of the nature and causes of the 
rainbow, which according to the legend in Genesis 
was a miraculous ‘‘sign’’ of the Holy Spirit, he was 
charged with being in league with Satan. This un- 
enlightened attitude on the part of the church, born 
of ignorance and unreasoning religious zeal, stayed 
the development of science and deprived the world 
for centuries of discoveries which would have been 
of untold benefit to mankind. The ecclesiastics of 
England displayed marked opposition to the Royal 
Society and later showed their dislike for the Associ- 
ation for the Advancement of Science. The church 
authorities, both Protestant and Catholic, for a long 
period discouraged instruction in chemistry and 
physics, and, when this was no longer possible, 
sought to bring it under the domination of theo- 
logical view-points. These same powers did their 
utmost to crush scientific research, to which the 
world owes immeasurable benefits, in its infancy, 
and afterward discouraged it as dangerous. Theo- 
logians gave their support to the false science of 
alchemy and accepted the interference of the devil 
in physical phenomena. Against Robert Boyle, the 
father of modern chemistry, the church was par- 
ticularly severe. But at last, just at the close of the 
eighteenth century, Black, Bergmann, Cavendish, 
Priestley, Scheele and Lavoisier ushered in the dawn 
of a new day in the physical sciences. The church 
had done all in her power to stifle their growth, but 
after the exhaustion of every resource had found 
herself impotent to stay the irresistible progress of 
truth. 


208 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


In another chapter, we have traced the crude 
notions regarding the geography and shape of the 
earth, promulgated for centuries by the church, as 
well as her imaginative structure of the heavens. 
We must remember, too, that these theories were 
all based upon a literal interpretation of Scriptural 
texts, and orthodox belief in them made a basis of 
Christian faith. We have also noted how such great 
apostles of science as Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, 
Kepler and Newton were denounced as foes of God, 
because their epoch-making discoveries had drawn 
aside the veil and permitted men to gain a larger 
vision and a fuller knowledge of the eternal mys- 
teries of the universe. We have called attention to 
the social ostracism of Sir Charles Lyell by English 
churchmen, because his geological researches upset 
the sacred chronology of Hebrew Scripture, a 
chronology based upon the most monstrous assump- 
tion that ever engaged the thought of men. The 
ludicrous attempts of the church to explain the fos- 
sil record of the rocks afford a capital example of 
the utter unreliability of theology in the field of 
science. The long refusal to accept the findings in 
the ancient cave-dwellings of Europe and the results 
of archeological research as valid evidence of the 
vast antiquity of man illustrates the traditional hos- 
tility of the church to the reception of new knowl- 
edge. A supernatural origin was attributed to 
comets and thunderbolts and for centuries the belief 
that they are direct manifestations of divine wrath 
was preached with the utmost vigor. The mad orgy 
of witchcraft and the large number of executions, 


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SCIFNCE AND THE CHURCH 209 


justified in the name of God by the text, ‘‘Thou 
shalt not suffer a witch to live,’’ constitutes a hid- 
eous and ineffaceable blot upon the theological 
interpretation of Scripture, as applied to one im- 
portant branch of science. The opposition of the 
church to the early researches in medicine and 
anatomy and her inhumane treatment of the feeble- 
minded, as being possessed of devils, make pathetic 
chapters in the scientific blunderings of Christian 
theology. The fierce warfare against Darwin and 
evolution a half-century ago and the present flare- 
up over it in this twentieth century of intellectual 
enlightenment show how little this wretched record 
of the church in the domain of science has taught 
to certain portions of her leadership. These well- 
meaning, but misguided ‘‘friendly enemies’’ of 
to-day stand where the early church fathers stood, 
with this important exception, that they live in the 
most enlightened era of Christian civilization, in- 
stead of in an age of scientific ignorance and 
superstitious wonder. That such harkings-back to 
a literal belief in the legendary science of pre- 
historic civilizations should prevail in any currents 
of American thought now is one of the most astound- 
ing facts of modern times. 

Let us confidently hope, however, that this un- 
enlightened stand of a powerful faction of the 
theological forces against the teaching of evolution 
will soon spend itself and that it will mark the last 
pitched battle between the adherents of two essen- 
tially related forms of universal truth. 

With a complete record of defeat to their credit 


210 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


at every point of the controversy for three hundred 
years, may we not ask why the present-day oppo- 
nents of evolution are any more sure of their ground 
than were their forefathers on a score of other 
battle-fields? Does not the experience of the past 
teach them with an overwhelming emphasis that the 
Scriptures are utterly fallacious as a guide to scien- 
tific truth? Was not the Scriptural warrant for the 
validity of the ancient view of the heavens just as 
strong as is that for the legendary Story of Crea- 
tion? Have not the researches of Darwin and a host 
of others shattered this latter view as completely as 
did the revelations of Galileo’s telescope bring to 
ruin the celestial spheres and the solid firmament 
of heaven? Is it not tragically futile to pit against 
the findings of Christian scholarship and the wealth 
of scientific knowledge the crude imaginings of in- 
fant peoples almost before the dawn of civilization? 
To say that God told those early writers what to 
record is, as we have seen, an assumption which has 
been proved to be utterly false. This assertion may 
find currency among the uninformed for a gener- 
ation yet, but its deliberate perpetuation by those 
who should know the truth is a crime against the 
very cause which it is sought to serve. To maintain 
that, even though the literal teachings of Genesis 
about creation may be false, to teach the truth will 
weaken Christian faith refutes itself. Christian 
faith has survived the substitution of the truth of 
science for the literal interpretation of Scripture so 
many times that it is perfectly safe to assume that 
it will continue to do so throughout all future time. 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH OT 


THE MODERN VIEW 

Shailer Mathews, in his book, The Faith of 
Modernism, has well put the modern view of science 
and the Bible in the following words: ‘‘There is no 
static religion or standardized formula in the Bible. 
Tn that fact is one of the most significant of the 
Modernist points of view, viz., that the true atti- 
tude toward God and the true experience of His 
presence are possible and discernible in the midst 
of imperfect and even mistaken scientific and other 
views. The author of Genesis may declare that the 
sun and stars were created after the creation of the 
earth and plant life, a conception which our knowl- 
edge of astronomy shows is incorrect. But this 
error does not prevent our sharing in the author’s 
faith that in the shaping of the universe, God was 
present. So, too, it is only something to be ex- 
pected when we find in the religious experiences of 
men who lived before the siege of Troy conceptions 
of God which to our Christian morality seem un- 
worthy. Such conceptions are, however, no bar to 
the discovery that with all the human infirmities 
attributed to Him, the Jahweh of the Book of 
Judges possessed qualities which had only to be 
expanded as men’s experience expanded, to give the 
righteous monotheism of the prophets. Belief in 
the providence of God can be expressed in poetry, 
folk-tale and legend just as truly as in literal state- 
ment.’’* 

Kiven in the third century, Origen, one of the 
most influential of the early church fathers, had 
sensed the modern view-point. In speaking of the 


*The Macmillan Company, 1925, 


919 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


absurdity of a literal interpretation of the first 
chapters of Genesis, he said: 


‘‘Hor who that has understanding will suppose 
that the first, and second, and third day, and the 
evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and 
moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it 
were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as 
to suppose that God, after the manner of a husband- 
man, planted a paradise in Hden, toward the east, 
and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, 
so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth 
obtained life?”’ 

This and much more in the Old Testament 
seemed impossible of belief to a great Christian 
scholar as long as seventeen hundred years ago. 
And even in the literal interpretation of the New 
Testament, he found serious impossibilities, con- 
tradictions and discrepancies. 

Doctor Fosdick, in his The Modern Use of the 
Bible, has well asked: ‘‘To be a Bible Christian 
must we think, as some seem to suppose, that a fish 
swallowed a man, or that the sun and moon stood 
still at Joshua’s command, or that God sent she- 
bears to eat up children who were rude to a prophet, 
or that saints long dead arose and appeared in 
Jerusalem when our Lord was crucified? Is that 
what it means to be a Bible Christian?’’* 

No, to that ever-growing host of devout wor- 
shipers whose faith in the conclusions of science will 
not permit them to entertain such ideas, handed 
down from an age of ‘‘signs and wonders,’’ it may 
be said with perfect confidence that our present 


*The Maemillan Company, 1924. 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 913 


knowledge of the universe in the light of modern 
research and discovery not only makes these events 
utterly impossible of belief, but, had they actually 
happened, a violation of the nature of God himself. 
The overshadowing truth of the message of science 
to the church is the fact of the uniformity of the 
universe and the invariable precision of God’s ways 
of working. He did not set aside His laws in ancient 
times any more than He does to-day. The modern 
Christian is no longer compelled to do violence to 
his conception of the eternal fitness of things by 
an unnatural belief in supposed happenings which 
we know originated in the minds of a highly imagi- 
native people, long centuries before the knowledge 
of a universe of law and order had become a per- 
manent possession of mankind. 

And if you ask, ‘‘What does this modern view 
leave to us of the Bible?’”’ the answer is ‘‘Hivery- 
thing of any permanent value.’’ The deeps of the 
human spirit are the same yesterday, to-day and 
forever. The Bible is the world’s classic record of 
religious experience. It unfolds the most notable ex- 
ample of spiritual evolution. Old ideas of God and 
sin and justice and worship, adapted only to the 
childhood of the race, are gradually outgrown. We 
see them replaced by new and loftier conceptions. 
In this Book of Books, we feel the religious life of a 
great people throb with the energy of constantly en- 
larging religious convictions. Religion is no dead 
static thing. It glows brighter and brighter with 
each fresh revelation of the Divine Immanence. The 
crude notions growing out of the literal interpreta- 


214 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


tion of ideas belonging to another age are slipping 
into the background. But the lasting experiences 
of men—their loves and hates, griefs and strug- 
gles, defeats and victories, hopes and fears, temp- 
tations and desires—are still in the Bible. The 
stories of these experiences are as applicable to-day 
as they were three thousand years ago. And these, 
the teachings of science can never touch. The spir- 
itual appeal of the Bible is as strong as ever. And 
this appeal is absolutely independent of any ad- 
herence to the outgrown symbols of a by-gone era of 
world affairs. A knowledge of science has relieved 
religious teaching of much excess baggage, and has 
given it immeasurably nobler conceptions of God 
and the universe, but the fundamental spiritual 
values of the race, implanted in the evolving soul 
of man and finding expression in the sacred liter- 
ature of the Bible, will stand eternally in their own 
right. They are as indestructible as the law of 
gravitation or the primal energy from which our 
solar system sprang. This crystallization in the 
Bible of these heights and deeps of human experi- 
ence can never be taken away. With such a price- 
less legacy, the church may well relinquish its 
formal adherence to the outgrown symbols of the 
transcendent conception of the spirituality of the 
universe. 

The tragedy of theological history has been the 
failure of the church to realize that creation has 
never ceased and that the discoveries of science, 
instead of weakening the prestige of God, are the 
most marvelous manifestations of the Divine Im- 


SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH 215 


manence that have ever been vouchsafed to the 
knowledge of men. The apostles of the church and 
the leaders of scientific research are the foremost 
instruments for the revelation of the eternal truth 
of the universe. Co-workers with God, it is a 
travesty upon the divine progress of the race that 
they should ever have become opponents in the 
ages-old search for a better understanding of life 
and its environment. That large numbers of the 
most eminent leaders of the church are welcoming 
whole-heartedly the work of science and each new 
accession to the world’s knowledge is the most 
hopeful sign on the horizon to-day. When men, par- 
ticularly their leaders, come to realize what a vast 
ocean of unexplored knowledge still remains, we 
shall have an end forevermore to the inglorious 
attempts to stifle the spirit of discovery and dam 
up the springs of eternal truth. And when that 
turning-point in the history of mankind shall come, 
we shall find science and the church working shoul- 
der to shoulder in the cause of Him whose life is the 
soul of the universe. 


CHAPTER VIII 
MIRACLES 


Let it be stated at the very outset of this dis- 
cussion that the permanence of Christian faith is in 
no danger from the triumph of the truth. If for 
nineteen hundred years and more men have been 
clinging to a false belief in the occurrence of natural 
events whose causation would have constituted a 
direct violation of the divine nature, the world will 
lose nothing of value, if it allows these empty husks 
of an outgrown spiritual symbolism to slip into the 
realm of historic fallacies. Indeed, it will be im- 
measurably the gainer. A false belief is excess 
baggage. It contains nothing vital. It is an en- 
cumbrance to spiritual progress, and never more 
so than in this twentieth century of rapidly widen- 
ing areas of human knowledge. Let us be very 
frank. So long as the race is here, spiritual prog- 
ress will never cease, but any organization which 
deliberately shuts its eyes to the truth and seeks to 
establish its future upon the fossilized ignorance of 
the distant past is doomed utterly. If the church 
would not sacrifice her leadership in this present 
age of scientific and historic research, she must 
square her creeds with that rapidly accumulating 
body of facts with which men in ever increasing 

216 


MIRACLES 217 


numbers are becoming conversant. It is not a ques- 
tion of what her leaders wish to believe, but of what 
they must believe. The researches of Christian 
scholarship have shown the extreme improbability 
of the occurrence of miracles in the commonly ac- 
cepted meaning of the term, that is, a violation of 
the divine order of natural procedure. The dis- 
coveries of science have demonstrated their utter 
impossibility in a normal world. These are the in- 
escapable facts which must be faced. It will avail 
nothing against them to brand scientists as ‘‘dis- 
honest scoundrels . . . burrowing in the ground 
and stealing away the faith of your children.’’ 
Christian faith rests upon a basis far more sub- 
stantial than the long-cherished beliefs of ignorance. 
If it did not, it would have perished long ago. 
First, let us get the historic setting in which the 
belief in miracles arose. To understand it we must 
go back to the prescientific ages, which extended 
from the earliest times to Galileo and after. In 
those centuries of unenlightened thinking, anything 
could happen. People believed in signs and won- 
ders. They were fond of the supernatural. There 
was nothing incomprehensible about it. A miracle 
was simply an extraordinary method of divine ac- 
tion. The earth and its phenomena were plastic to 
the touch of the Almighty. The universe was a 
creature of His creation, which he directed from the 
outside. He could do anything He pleased with it. 
Most events happened in a usual way, but at any 
moment He could choose to act in an unusual way. 
Such an occurrence presented no difficulty to the 


218 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


thought of those ages, because natural laws were 
unknown. No laws were broken, because none had 
been established. Any natural event whose ex- 
planation was unknown was a miracle. I[ivents 
which admit of the simplest explanations now were 
then regarded as miraculous. Even to-day, in the 
uncivilized portions of the globe, the natives believe 
in a host of miracles. The locomotive, automobile, 
or airplane, when seem for the first time, is a miracle 
and a thing for worship. The people of Bible times 
had not advanced much beyond this state of prim- 
itive superstition. A great buoyancy filled the air. 
They lived in daily expectation of marvelous hap- 
penings. With God anything was possible. In fact, 
if He could not perform miracles, He was unworthy 
of their worship. Miracles were common in the 
religions of all the early civilizations. They are not 
peculiar to the sacred literature of the Hebrews, and 
many of them are practically identical with those 
told about other gods and prophets. That was an 
age of miracles as much as this is an age of science. 
Belief in them grew in that fertile soil of credulity 
and ignorance as readily as flowers blossom in a 
springtime meadow. The only mysterious thing now 
about this quite natural age of superstitious won- 
ders is the grip which it still has upon religious 
thought in this day of wide-spread scientific knowl- 
edge. Because these events are recorded in the 
Bible, they are still believed by many, but, when 
found in almost precisely similar form in the sacred 
writings of other peoples, they are branded as 
legendary. 


MIRACLES 219 


Before we take up the Biblical miracles in the 
light of historical research and scientific discovery, 
let us consider a few from the large numbers of 
those reported in more recent times. It may not be 
generally known that the age of ‘‘miracle working’’ 
did not cease until the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. It continued until the discoveries of mod- 
ern science inaugurated a new way of looking at 
Nature and caused the faith in such improbable 
occurrences to disappear. 

The case of St. Francis Xavier, as reported by 
Andrew D. White in his notable work, A History of 
the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christen- 
dom, 1s typical of the manner in which belief in 
miracles was fostered during the early centuries of 
the church and down to the beginning of the modern 
era. Xavier was a Spanish nobleman of the six- 
teenth century, who embraced the plans of Ignatius 
Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, and 
became a missionary of vast influence in the Far 
Hast, dying in 1552 on the desert island of San 
Chan. Now it is a most significant circumstance 
that, although Xavier himself has left in his own 
writings a detailed record of his many years of 
missionary work, we find in them no event which 
could possibly be interpreted as a miracle. He made 
no claim to miraculous power, and none of his 
brother missionaries in their numerous letters, 
written and published during Xavier’s lifetime and 
still in existence, make any mention of miracles. 
Yet his biographies are full of alleged supernatural 
events wrought by him, and the farther away we get 


220 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


from the time in which he lived the more luxuriant 
is this legendary growth. Although Xavier himself 
has told us with what difficulty he mastered the 
Japanese language, he is credited with the ‘‘gift of 
tongues,’’ even speaking with such fluency from the 
very first that the natives thought him one of their 
own race. In these imaginative writings, scores of 
miracles stand to the credit of St. Francis. He is 
said to have raised the dead, to have restored sight 
to the blind, to have caused an earthquake to punish 
a blasphemous town, to have made sea-water fresh 
by the sign of the cross, to have been lifted bodily 
from the earth and transfigured before the multi- 
tude, and to have called down fire from heaven to 
destroy a wicked village. Most singular of all, on 
one of his voyages he caused a crab to restore a 
crucifix which had been lost overboard. On the 
basis of ten such miracles, selected from the long 
list of pious stories invented by his industrious ad- 
mirers, Xavier was cannonized in 1622 by Pope 
Gregory XV. 

‘‘Did the people actually believe such tales?”’ 
you ask. Yes. There was nothing improbable 
about such happenings at that quite recent period 
in the history of mankind. They were the order of 
the day. People had always been taught to believe 
in miracles, and they had to occur. The extraor- 
dinary circumstance would have been their failure 
to materialize. This tendency to give a miraculous 
twist even to the most ordinary events had become 
almost a public disease among the leaders of those 
docile peoples. But let us not fail to note that there 


MIRACLES 221 


is not a shred of evidence to support one of these 
numerous miracles attributed to Xavier. They 
grew as all such stories have grown, long after the 
event, in the fertile imaginations of well-intentioned 
apostles of religious ideals. Often they have be- 
come venerable with age and so deeply rooted in 
faith and creed that to many their extirpation seems 
a sacrilege. 

The foregoing is only one of the scores of exam- 
ples which might be cited in the long development 
of miracle-stories. According to a legend of the 
thirteenth century, Albert the Great created an 
artificial man, possessed of life and such marvelous 
reasoning powers that St. Thomas, unable to answer 
him, was compelled to break him in pieces with his 
staff. Miracles without limit were ascribed to the 
power of St. Thomas a Becket. In time pools and 
sacred shrines became the abiding-places of miracu- 
lous potencies. At the tomb of St. Thomas, leprosy 
was cured, amputated limbs were restored, a boy 
seven days dead was brought to life, and a slaugh- 
tered cow, whose skin had already been sent to the 
tannery, was returned whole to the owners. Al- 
though Mahommet in his life-time disclaimed any 
miraculous power whatever, his followers had soon 
made him responsible for numerous supernatural 
events. The most astonishing miracles have been 
attributed to all sorts of historic personages. Thé 
theological atmosphere of Christian. Hurope was 
saturated with them for centuries. Scores of saints 
were officially credited with raising the dead, all 
manner of healing, the gift of tongues, miraculous 


222, THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


disappearance and reappearance, instantaneous 
transfer from one place to another, and even trans- 
figuration. And this right down to the beginning 
of the modern era. 

It is exceedingly significant to observe, however, 
that these inventions seldom, if ever, occur in first- 
hand documents. It is only with the lapse of time 
that they appear. The closer we get to the actual 
characters about whom they center, the fewer 
‘‘sions and wonders’’ do we find. A very important 
bearing has this fact, too, upon the Biblical miracles. 

But this golden age of miracle working was 
destined to receive a rude awakening. In the sev- 
enteenth century came the epoch-making discoveries 
of Galileo and the shattering of the theological 
heavens. Through the mists of ancient superstition 
a reign of law began to emerge. Men were experi- 
menting along many avenues of scientific inquiry. 
The modern search for truth had begun its irresist- 
ible progress. Many forms of natural phenomena 
were receiving rational explanations. In this same 
century Newton demonstrated the law of gravitation 
and brought to light a reign of order among the 
members of the solarsystem. Realm after realm was 
redeemed from the capricious irregularity of de- 
moniacal agents and celestial beings. The light of 
truth was at last dispelling the dark shadows of 
prehistoric ignorance. A reformation was taking 
place in the thought of men. Geographical explora- 
tions were widening mental horizons. Ancient 
fallacies were receding into the background. In 
such an atmosphere belief in miracles could no 


MIRACLES 923 


longer survive. They became the flotsam and jet- 
sam of the crude uncritical ages that had gone 
before. 

The first effect of this new knowledge was to 
shatter belief in the miracles of contemporary 
saints. The Protestant Church, however, at first 
refused to deny their occurrence, but attributed 
them to the devil. But gradually this belief became 
too heavy a burden, and it had to go. Next doubt 
was cast upon any of the miracles credited to the 
Christian era, and the boundary-line of the miracu- 
lous was carried backward to the time of the 
apostles. Why it should not have been extended to 
the beginning of recorded history, there is no 
assignable reason, save the reluctance of the church 
to relinquish what seemed to be its most direct evi- 
dence of divine origin. She could not see that the 
great spiritual truths of the Bible and the teachings 
of Christ, secure as they are for all time, need no 
false support from a belief in the occurrence of in- 
credible natural events. But be that as it is, 
Christians came to believe only in the miracles of 
Bible times, which they sought to exalt into a posi- 
tion of unassailable sanctity. Still the conquests of 
science did not cease, and people came to wonder 
why the miracles of the Bible rest upon any more 
secure foundation than did those of the early church 
or the ones recorded in the sacred literatures of 
other peoples. That question mark, too, has not yet 
ceased to cast its shadow across the path of spir- 
itual progress. 


D4 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GoD 


THE BIBLE MIRACLES 


The Bible miracles were subject to the same laws 
of growth as any others. They sprang from the 
same sort of soil. Belief in them flourished and 
grew strong in the same atmosphere of credulity 
and superstition. Their presence in the Bible is no 
warrant for their authenticity. They in no way 
differ from the wonder stories of contemporary 
civilizations. In many instances they are practically 
identical. Their origin, too, is not to be found in 
first-hand records. 

The miracles of the Old Testament are only such 
as we should expect from the times in which that 
literature arose. These writings are not history as 
we understand modern history. Much is legendary, 
oral traditions handed down for decades and often 
centuries before being committed to written form. 
Neither does any scholar of standing to-day believe 
that they were dictated by God. They grew like 
any other literature, and by a process of natural 
selection came to be regarded as divine. The mir- 
acles which these writings record are on a par with 
those of any other literature or any other time. Be- 
lief in their occurrence is no longer necessary to 
faith in the divine origin of the Scriptures. 

Wherever we have the original records of the 
prophets, they are noteworthy for an almost entire 
absence of miracle. Hosea, Amos, Ezekiel and Jere- 
miah make no mention of the supernatural. But in 
the stories of Hlijah and Elisha, who left no original 
records of their lives, we find ourselves in the realm 
of the miraculous. Just as in later centuries, mir- 


MIRACLES Ya 


acle stories grew about the personage of Xavier, so 
did they about these first great representatives of 
the prophetic line. We are familiar with such 
marvels as: the raising of a dead man by contact 
with the bones of the prophet Elisha, the floating 
of an axe-head in defiance of the law of buoyancy, 
the smiting of the Jordan with the prophet’s cloak 
and the parting of the waters, the slaying of sol- 
diers by fire from heaven, the ravens which brought 
food to Elijah, the unfailing jar of meal and cruse 
of oil, the reviving of the widow’s son, the curing 
of the leprosy of Naaman, the Syrian army smitten 
with blindness at the call of Elisha, the she-bears 
sent to eat up mocking children, and the ascension 
of Klijah in a chariot of fire. Others are also told 
about these undoubted historic figures of Old-Testa- 
ment tradition, but they only serve to paint in more 
vivid colors the unscientific setting of that age of 
superstitious wonder. 

Again when we examine the legendary literature 
of earlier periods, we find an abundance of the 
miraculous. As if by magic, plagues appear and 
disappear in Egypt, the sun and moon stand still 
at the command of Joshua, water flows from the 
smitten rock, the walls of Jericho fall down, Lot’s 
wife is changed to a pillar of salt, and the waters of 
the Jordan part while the people pass. Wherever 
we find first-hand records of Biblical history, how- 
ever, miracles almost disappear, or they are few 
and simple in character. A notable illustration is to 
be found in the entire absence of the supernatural 
from the reign of David. 


226 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


The miracles of the Old Testament are a product 
of their times. No sacred literature could have 
arisen in that unscientific age without them. They 
cast no doubt upon the great spiritual truths of the 
Scriptures. Those precious heritages from the 
early evolution of man’s divinity are secure for all 
time. They lose none of their value from being 
shorn of the miraculous. Because the rapidly ac- 
cumulating funds of knowledge in every field of 
inquiry have made necessary a reinterpretation of 
the Bible, no one need despair. Religious thought 
must keep step with the intellectual progress of its 
age. No one would have the world go back to the 
crude forms of ancestor and Nature worship of 
primitive men. No more should we to-day wish to 
substitute the outgrown spiritual symbols of an age 
of ignorance for the living truth of fresh revela- 
tions. The truths of the Bible are in no danger of 
being obscured. The Almighty is abundantly able 
to conserve the moral gains of the past and to care 
for the spiritual welfare of the future. 

The miracles of the New Testament cluster about 
the transcendent figure of Christ. It is unfor- 
tunate that we have no first-hand documents giving 
the record of His life and ministry. None of the 
books of the New Testament were written until a 
considerable period after His death. We can not be 
sure that the sayings of Christ, as recorded in them, 
are His exact words. They are of course substan- 
tially so, for the art of oral transmission was much 
more highly developed then than now. Many of His 
sayings doubtless were not preserved, thus con- 


MIRACLES O27 


stituting an irreparable loss to succeeding ages. 
The same atmosphere of credulity and superstition 
which enveloped the preceding and following cen- 
turies was also typically characteristic of the period 
of Christ. If miracles were not found in the sacred 
literature that records His ministry, it would be 
a cause for inquiry. Nevertheless, the authenticity 
of these miracles must be subject to the same criti- 
cal interpretation as those of any other similar 
epoch. 

It is interesting to note in the New Testament 
the same inveterate tendency to veer toward the 
miraculous, the farther we recede from the original 
sources of information. In the Epistles of St. Paul, 
the oldest of this collection of writings, no miracles 
are recorded. Paul probably wrote within fifteen 
or twenty years after the crucifixion. Had the 
miracles of Christ become well established at that 
time, he surely would have mentioned them specif- 
ically. His silence is immensely significant. 

The authorship of Mark, now conceded by 
scholars to be the oldest of the Gospels, was not 
earlier than 65 A. D., a generation after the death 
of Christ. Matthew and Luke appeared shortly 
thereafter, while John, an almost mystical book, 
was probably not written until the second century. 
With these facts in mind, there should be no illu- 
sions as to the traditional origin of these sacred 
books. Jesus himself wrote nothing. After His 
death, the recollections of His life were so vivid in 
the minds of the apostles that they needed no writ- 
ten record of His work, Firmly believing in His 


228 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


early return, they could see no necessity for one. 
But He did not return, and, based upon the preach- 
ing of His followers, oral traditions inevitably 
sprang up. Characteristically of the age, stories, 
exaggerations and legends doubtless intermingled 
with these historic traditions. From the works of 
Christian writers of the first three centuries, which 
fortunately have been preserved to us, we gain 
glimpses of documents which probably preceded 
the Gospels as we have them to-day and served as a 
common source of information for those who com- 
piled them. Probably a majority of the foremost 
Biblical scholars now rejects the authorship of the 
Gospel of St. John by the disciple of that name. 
Its late date seems to preclude that possibility. It 
must be granted at the outset that nowhere in the 
four Gospels are we dealing with first-hand infor- 
mation. 

It is not our purpose here to consider in detail 
all of the miracles attributed to Christ. Two or 
three of them, together with emphasis upon the 
wide divergence prevailing among the different 
narratives of the same events, will be sufficient. 

Let us take first the virgin birth. Nowhere in 
the sayings of Jesus does He make any direct ref- 
erence to His parentage or birth. If there had 
been anything miraculous about them, Christ would 
certainly have known the facts, and would have 
made some allusion to such extraordinary circum- 
stances concerning His personage. Had He been 
aware of His absolutely unique relation to God, His 
silence becomes unintelligible. Assuming that Jesus’ 


MIRACLES 229 


own words are the best authority concerning himself, 
the teaching of Matthew that He had no human 
father can not be regarded as historical. Paul does 
not even mention it. Apparently it formed no im- 
portant part of the Christ tradition at the time 
he wrote. Neither is mention of it to be found in 
Mark, the first of the Gospels. Not only does the 
Gospel of St. John fail to allude to it, but reference 
is specifically made to Jesus as the son of Joseph. 
That the story of the Nativity, as found in Luke, 
is largely poetical, rather than historical, seems to 
be self-evident. The accounts in Matthew and Luke 
are neither consistent with the words of Jesus nor 
with the oldest Gospel. The prophecy in Isaiah of 
the virgin birth of a Messiah has been shown by 
Christian scholarship to have been a mistransla- 
tion of the original Hebrew. The word ‘‘virgin’’ 
should be ‘‘young woman.’’ 

When we consider, too, that the virgin birth is 
not peculiar to the Messiah but that it was cus- 
tomary in that age to attribute a miraculous origin 
to great leaders, it becomes clear that the compilers 
of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke ascribed to 
Christ only what the people according to their 
understanding had come to believe must be true 
concerning so marvelous a Teacher of men. There 
was no conscious deception. Those writers believed 
they were telling the truth, but they were not writ- 
ing history. In the light of present knowledge, 
Christian faith no longer obligates us to believe in 
the occurrence of an event which outrages the 
divine order of Nature and for which there is not 
a particle of historical support. 


230 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


No one in passing from Mark through Matthew 
and Luke to John can fail to observe both the in- 
crease in the importance attached to miracles and 
the growing note of exaggeration which runs 
through them. In John, the authorship of which is 
farthest removed from the Christ period, we find 
Jesus turning water into wine, restoring sight to 
a man born blind, and raising Lazarus after he had 
been four days in the-tomb. The miracle-working 
of the New Testament Gospels runs strictly true 
to form. 

Passing over the wondrous works of Jesus’ 
ministry, let us come to the transcendent miracle of 
His resurrection. No saying of Jesus warrants the 
conclusion that he expected a bodily resurrection. 
Paul, who was the first to write and who mentions 
five ‘‘appearances,’’ nowhere claims to have seen 
Christ in bodily form. Indeed, he refers to one of 
these appearances as a ‘‘heavenly vision.’’ Paul 
was a mystic, and there is no reason for believing 
that he ever intended to interpret his overwhelming 
conviction of the repeated personal manifestations 
of Christ’s presence as other than mystical visions. 
He has nothing to say of the empty tomb. In the 
Gospel narratives of the resurrection, the utmost 
confusion prevails. There is no sure tradition as 
to who found the tomb open, or why any one had 
come thither. No unity correlates the various 
statements as to whom and where he reappeared. 
The freedom exhibited in the treatment of the same 
incident leads to the irresistible conclusion that 
these writers were not recording history but legen- 


MIRACLES ok 


dary traditions which had matured during a 
generation of unparalleled spiritual unrest. It is 
impossible to believe that with a reanimated body 
Jesus both appeared and did not appear in the 
vicinity of Jerusalem and in Galilee, that He passed 
through closed doors, that He ate fish, that He 
offered His hands and feet to the touch of doubting 
Thomas, and that He finally took flight through 
the absolute cold of the interstellar spaces. Such 
a faith is but a crystallization of the crudest sort 
of spiritual materialism. The world, let us hope, 
has outgrown it. No longer should it be necessary 
to strengthen our faith in the reality of the Risen 
Spirit of Christ by a false belief in empty tombs 
and a reanimated physical body. If the simple 
souls of that day found it impossible to clothe their 
supreme realization of his Unseen Presence in 
other than material symbols, that is no reason why 
the defenders of Christianity now should not see 
things with a clearer vision. 

Let us make it perfectly plain, however, that, 
while history and science must withhold their as- 
sent from a belief in the literal truth of the 
resurrection miracle, they can never account for 
the transformation of that little timid band of dis- 
ciples into a bold and triumphant power without 
assuming in its utmost reality the Christ Vision 
in their hearts and souls. And therein lies the 
miracle of Christ,—in that ‘‘heavenly vision’’ and 
in nineteen centuries of Christian civilization. In 
His transcendent life in the souls of men, we see the 
culminating manifestation of the divine personality. 


932 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Jesus of Nazareth was the highest Incarnation of 
the Divine Immanence that the race has known, 
and His Spirit has never since ceased to be the 
guiding power of human striving. The Supreme 
Divinity of Christ and the immeasurable influence 
of His example are altogether above and beyond 
any petty ecclesiastical dogmas regarding the 
virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, or the truth 
or falsity of his recorded miracles. Were they not, 
He would be now only a figure in history, but one 
among other religious teachers. In this scientific 
age, to make belief in the literal truth of those 
oriental legends a formal condition of the soul’s 
salvation and requisite to entry into the Christian 
ministry is a circumstance which ‘‘passeth under- 
standing.’’ Why seek, ever so. slightly, to 
substitute the husks of tradition for the living, 
throbbing truth of spiritual realities? There is 
miracle enough in the ever-expanding life of Christ 
in the souls of men to make more than unnecessary 
the compulsion of a strict adherence to formal 
creeds unsuited to the present age. Along that 
way lie ecclesiastical suicide, the strangulation of 
religious forces, and the temporary staying of the 
tides of spiritual progress. But eventually the truth 
will win, and the miracle of the Christ-life, working 
in the lives of men, will become so apparent that 
all may understand. When we have climbed to the 
sunlit heights of a larger understanding and have 
caught a broader vision of the eternal truth, we 
shall know that the teachings and example of Christ 
have lost nothing of value from having been re- 


MIRACLES 233 


lieved of their burden of the supernatural. A 
deeper and vastly more significant spiritual faith 
awaits the coming of that auspicious time. 


MIRACLES AND SCIENCE 


The historic meaning of miracles is at total 
variance with the fundamental truths of scientific 
discovery. If by miracle we mean a violation of 
the divine order of natural procedure, a capricious 
irregularity in the occurrence of physical phenom- 
ena, then science must reject the hypothesis, both 
as highly improbable and utterly unverifiable. 
There is no reason for assuming that the same 
unalterable natural laws which we find in force 
to-day were not in unrestricted operation in Pales- 
tine nineteen hundred years ago. In the brief 
moment of cosmic time which has since intervened, 
there can have been no change in the divine methods 
of running the universe. We know that miracles 
do not occur now. They could not have occurred 
then. There is no reason for believing that God 
acts differently in one historical era from what He 
does in another. The universal law of gravitation 
expressed the movements of the heavenly bodies 
then as now. A chemist would have obtained the 
same reactions between the elements that his labora- 
tory yields him to-day. The atoms, molecules and 
electrons would have spun and danced in his test- 
tubes with the same unerring precision of time and 
movement. The thunder cloud would have responded 
in the same way to Franklin’s kite. The resources 
of physical power which have revolutionized in- 


234 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


dustry and society were only awaiting the magic 
touch of inventive genius to become the burden 
bearers of the race. The same natural forces were 
at work refashioning the earth’s surface. The 
heavens presented the same awesome spectacle of 
silent grandeur. There is no reason whatever for 
believing that Nature acted in any unusual or er- 
ratic way in the Palestine of ‘‘yesterday.’’ The 
only differences between that age and this are those 
of mental horizons and varying degrees of the 
revelations of the Divine Immanence. These hori- 
zons have broadened vastly, and the revelations of 
the divine are immeasurably larger and richer than 
they were in that youthful period of uncritical 
thought. It was the very exuberance of ignorance 
and superstition that bred the false idea of mira- 
cles. 

As to the occurrence of miracles, there is no 
verifiable instance of a lifeless body that was 
raised from the dead. There is no verifiable in- 
stance of an Individual who was born of a virgin. 
There is no verifiable instance of a human being 
who was able to rise against the force of gravity 
and fly off into interstellar space. There is no 
verifiable instance of such artificial alchemy as 
that involved in the changing of water into wine. 
In all the vast numbers of miracles reported from 
the prescientific ages of religious experiences, 
there is not one which possesses a shadow of evi- 
dence in support of its authenticity. In view of 
this total lack of corroborating evidence, the case 
for miracles must be regarded as wholly unproved. 


MIRACLES 235 


Before we conclude, however, it must be said 
that there is nothing theoretically impossible about 
the occurrence of a miracle. Science does not deny 
this theoretical possibility, but it does say that, 
practically, miracles are utterly out of harmony 
with the procedure of a normal world. If one 
chooses, a miracle may be regarded as the result 
of a natural law, or method of divine action, which 
has to its credit but a single event. In the absence, 
however, of any authentic record of such an event, 
we are compelled to believe that the phenomena of 
miracles have never occurred. 

There is one class of so-called miracles which 
undoubtedly have many instances to their credit. 
But they are really not miracles, for they violate 
no natural law. I refer to the miracles of healing. 
Many wonderful ‘‘cures’’ have been effected in all 
ages, to-day no less than formerly, by suggestion, 
persuasion, hypnotic influence, and the power of 
faith. But these are due to the operation of 
physico-mental laws, which are not yet fully under- 
stood. Many of the healing miracles of Christ do 
not contravene the laws of science, and there was 
undoubtedly an historic basis for some of them. 

With the voice of science so unmistakable in its 
teaching, it is inconceivable that learned leaders 
of the Christian Church in the grave deliberations 
of the council-chamber should seriously debate the 
wisdom of insisting upon a literal adherence to 
outgrown beliefs which should have been banished 
from religious dogma at least three centuries ago. 


CHAPTER IX 
Mopern Mrmac ies 


IF wk regard a miracle as a wonderful revelation 
of the Divine Immanence, a marvelous achievement 
of man in the conquest of Nature, then in this mod- 
ern age we are living in the golden era of the 
miraculous. But whether or not we accept this 
definition of miracle, certain it is that the divine 
revelations of God were never more manifest than 
they are to-day. For three centuries the world has 
been witnessing in a multitude of ways an ever- 
enlarging unfoldment of the divine. Why should 
men ever have thought that God has ceased to 
reveal himself, either in the manifestations of spirit 
or in the ceaseless evolution of material forces? 
What were the personalities of Milton, Shakespeare, 
Tennyson, Emerson and Lincoln,—Galileo, Newton, 
Faraday, Darwin and Pasteur but revelations of 
that larger Personality which ensouls the universe? 
And what shall we say of these marvels of modern 
science? Can we not see in them the hand of God? 
Does any one suppose that they are purely human 
achievements? In the evolution of civilizations and 
the ideals of men to constantly higher levels and 
nobler conceptions is there nothing of the divine? 
This is God’s universe. His life is manifest at 

236 


MODERN MIRACLES 297 


every point of Greation. Were His revelations to 
cease, the universe itself would disappear. The 
withdrawal of the divine energy would mean cosmic 
death. The life of God himself must depend upon 
ceaseless activity,—perpetual revelation. So long 
as creation stands, the inexhaustible possibilities of 
the Divine Immanence, call them miracles or what- 
ever one chooses, will never cease to unfold. 

As God spoke through the prophets of old, so 
does He speak through the seers of to-day. The 
telescope, the spectroscope, the microscope and 
the laboratory are His instruments and workshop. 
They enable us to search out the eternal mys- 
teries of His creation. They bring the heavenly 
host, as it were, within hailing distance and 
make the story of the rocks as an open book. 
They enlist the material forces of the earth in 
the service of man, and this co-partnership with 
God gives an abiding consciousness of the divinity 
of the human spirit. This mastery of a small part 
of the physical realm has enabled men to bridge the 
seas and span the continents. Modern medicine and 
surgery have redeemed disease and physical suffer- 
ing from the diabolical reign of demoniacal influ- 
ence. Communication has become instantaneous. 
With the speed of light the boundless ether, for 
aught we know, carries speech and music to the 
uttermost depths of space. In a very real sense 
these miracles of modern science have made us 
citizens of the universe. Like the birds, men have 
conquered the air. The atoms have been made to 
yield their secrets. To tap the vast reservoirs of 


238 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


subatomic energy and turn them to the account of 
men may be but an initial step in the succeeding 
conquest of physical forces. And with these tri- 
umphs of divine revelation, human suffering wanes, 
mental horizons broaden, life grows fuller, knowl- 
edge expands, and man’s adjustment to his environ- 
ment, or the Divine Immanence, constantly becomes 
more harmonious. Surely, God is speaking to-day 
in the lives and deéds of men as He never spoke 
before. 

Let us go back three centuries, and recall some 
of the outstanding achievements of physical science 
in the modern era. Harvey’s experiments upon 
serpents, by which he demonstrated the circulation 
of the blood, constituted an epoch-making discovery 
in the development of physiological science. The 
achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and 
Newton have already been told. The geometry of 
Descartes and the physics of Huyghens became the 
basis of later investigations of tremendous import. 
By the close of the seventeenth century, the work of 
the alchemists, misguided though it was, had laid 
the foundations for modern chemistry. Astronomy 
had come into its own. The stage had been set and 
the curtain had been raised for the enactment of 
the great drama of recent scientific accomplishment. 
Slowly, painfully, blunderingly had science emerged 
into the sunlight of modern triumphs. And what a 
paradise awaited the workers at the dawn of the 
new day! Fresh paths opened on every hand. In- 
numerable secrets were ready to unfold their 
meanings. Vast realms of unexplored truth beck- 


MODERN MIRACLES 239 


oned the investigator. The newly-discovered force 
of voltaic electricity had captured the popular 
imagination, and fresh marvels were eagerly 
awaited. The atmosphere of every European cap- 
ital fairly tingled with suppressed interest in all 
things scientific. Against the background of medie- 
val ignorance and superstition were silhouetted in 
prophetic forecast the mountain peaks of wonderful 
revelations. And a group of earnest searchers after 
truth, worthy peers of any of their successors, like 
hunters in a virgin forest, began the exploration of 
Nature’s secrets. 

Though it may be a myth we like to stand in 
imagination beside the fireplace of that Scottish 
home on the River Clyde and watch the boy Watt, 
as he ponders over the expansive force of steam. 
Years later we enter his little shop at the University 
of Glasgow and see him at work on the reconstruc- 
tion of the Newcomen steam-engine. Some unseen 
power urges him onward. His imagination has been 
fired with a great idea. He has caught a vision of 
a wonderful achievement for his fellowmen. He 
seeks to shackle the giant Steam and harness him 
for the world’s work. The result is the lifting of 
human burdens and the inauguration of a new in- 
dustrial age. We behold a revelation of the divine, 
a miracle of God. 

Scheele, working in the midst of poverty in his 
hittle apothecary shop, and Priestley, neglecting his 
duties as a clergyman to gratify his love for ex- 
perimental science, discover oxygen. Cavendish, 
wealthy recluse and passionate lover of truth, de- 


240 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


composes water and obtains hydrogen. Lavoisier, 
brilliant chemist of the French Revolution, balance 
in hand, determines that in the numerous trans- 
formations of matter nothing is lost. In the econ- 
omy of God’s universe all is saved. In imagination, 
we see Davy dancing about the laboratory of the 
Royal Institution from sheer joy at the discovery 
of the metal potassium through the agency of the 
voltaic current. We stand beside him in the lecture 
room as, with a battery of two thousand cells, he 
produces the electric are and the highest temper- 
ature then known to science. In that same labor- 
atory we follow Faraday, illustrious pupil of Davy, 
as, after ten years of patient knocking at the door 
of truth, he reveals the laws of electro-magnetism 
and makes plain the pathway to the invention of 
the dynamo, the electric motor, the induction coil 
and the transformer. What are these unveilings of 
eternal truth but revelations of the divine? Do 
they disclose nothing but a happy redistribution of 
energy and matter and the activity of finite intelli- 
gence? No, the minds of these workers in a new 
realm were fired with the Divine Presence as truly 
as were prophet and seer of old. They were instru- 
ments for the revelation of truths necessary for the 
next step in the evolution of the race. Blind chance 
and the accidental combinations of energy and mat- 
ter could never account for achievements so divine. 

Hargreaves overturns his spinning-wheel and in 
a moment of divine revelation catches a vision of a 
new machine to lighten the burden of his fellow- 
workers. Arkwright chances to see a red-hot bar 


MODERN MIRACLES 241 


of iron being rolled into a long rod by repeated 
passages between heavy corrugated rollers and in 
imagination he beholds the ‘‘water-frame’’ for 
spinning cotton warp. Crompton, pondering over 
the defects of the spinning-jenny and the water- 
frame, combines the excellencies of both in the 
spinning-mule and thereby carries a host of patient 
toilers past another mile-stone in the progress of 
the textile industry. Cartwright, an English clergy- 
man, challenged by a number of gentlemen to at- 
tempt the ‘‘impossible,’’ invents the power-loom and 
inaugurates a new era in the science of weaving. 
Kili Whitney loses a coveted position as private 
tutor in the home of a southern planter and turns 
his mechanical genius to the’invention of the cotton- 
gin and the consequent establishment of an industry 
of vast importance to his own and other lands. 
Creations of the divine personality, which we call 
genius, were these. As naturally as the flower un- 
folds from the bud, this group of revolutionizing 
inventions, at the proper point in the evolution of 


the race, were brought forth to meet the world’s © te 


need. 

Time and again the scourge of small-pox claimed 
in death one-tenth of the population of Christendom. 
Then toward the close of the eighteenth century, 
Jenner, as though guided by the hand of a Divine 
Destiny, discovered the secret of preventive vacci- 
nation, and wrought a miracle scarcely equaled else- 
where in the history of medical science. Had we 
stood in the Massachusetts General Hospital on 
October 16, 1846, we might have heard a young man 


242 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


exclaim ‘‘I have felt no pain.’? He had just under- 
gone what would formerly have been a painful 
surgical operation, but, thanks to the God-given 
discovery of ether by Doctor William T. G. Morton, 
surgery had been robbed of the major part of its 
attendant suffering. Those who had come to scoff 
beheld this almost incredible triumph in awe and 
silent admiration. No miracle from the unscien- 
tific past can compare, in the blessings conferred 
upon mankind, with this beneficent conquest of pain. 
What more significant ‘‘sign’’ of the divine can one 
desire than this temporary stilling of tortured 
nerves? With such a victory written large in every 
hospital of the world, why should any one choose 
to think that miracles have ever ceased? 

A generation later in a Paris hospital, an old 
man kept anxious watch over the life of a peasant 
lad. For two weeks he had kept the vigil. Every 
symptom was of the utmost concern. No change, 
however slight, escaped his eager notice. He could 
not believe that he would fail in what was to be his 
crowning achievement in snatching men from death. 
He had supreme faith in his new-found vaccine for 
the dread malady of rabies and in the God of the 
universe whose agent he considered himself to be. 
This young victim of a mad dog’s bite must not die. 
The hitherto fatal germs of hydrophobia coursing 
in his veins must be destroyed by the preventive 
virus with which he had been inoculated. No magic 
miracle was sought, but only a triumph of medical 
chemistry and the justification of a great faith in 
the scientific functioning of human organs. Louis 


MODERN MIRACLES 243 


Pasteur, the father of the germ theory of disease 
and old before his time in the service of suffering 
humanity, won his battle with death, for the lad 
lived and the treatment which the great scientist 
established has since saved the lives of thousands 
in every part of the world. To this savior of life 
and Lord Lister, his comrade across the Channel, 
the world will forever be grateful for the introduc- 
tion of antiseptic surgery and the redemption of 
mankind from the preventable ravages of infectious 
disease. What miracle recorded in sacred literature 
can compare in its benefits to the afflicted of the 
earth with these simple triumphs of medical science? 
May we not believe that this great apostle of en- 
lightened medical research was divinely sent to 
earth that men ‘‘might have life and have it more 
abundantly’? 

To that little group of distinguished men stand- 
ing in the Supreme Court room at the Capitol, on 
May 24, 1844, as Morse telegraphed to Vail at Balti- 
more that now famous message, ‘‘What hath God 
wrought?’’ a miracle, more wonderful than any of 
old, seemed to have been worked. In that hour of 
matchless triumph, the long years of poverty, strug- 
gle, hardship, ridicule and apparent defeat became 
as dust in the balance. The voice of God had 
spoken through the divinity of the human spirit. 
A. revelation of the Divine Immanence of vast im- 
portance to the future evolution of the race had 
been vouchsafed to the knowledge of men. This 
pioneer of a new day, who had dared to believe in 
the ‘‘impossible,’’ had been permitted to draw aside 


244 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


the veil and disclose a partial vision of yet more 
marvelous things to come. 

And again in imagination we see that company 
of eminent judges in an out-of-the-way corner of 
the Educational Building at the Philadelphia Cen- 
tennial in 1876, awed and silent witnesses, as Dom 
Pedro, the young emperor of Brazil, dropping the 
telephone receiver, exclaims, ‘‘My God, it talks!’’ 
Thirty-nine years later, Bell and Watson, the prin- 
cipals in that historic first message in the Boston 
attic, on an equally historic occasion, converse with 
each other across the continent as easily as though 
they were in adjoining rooms. The dashing of the 
breakers on the rock-bound shores of the Golden 
Gate are distinctly heard in the metropolis on the 
Atlantic sea-board. Nine months pass, and Theo- 
dore N. Vail, at his desk at 195 Broadway, New 
York, speaks into an ordinary telephone transmitter 
and the boundless ether carries his voice on wire- 
less waves to Colonel John J. Carty at San Diego, 
California. Sitting in Madison Square Garden, New 
York City, on Armistice Day, 1921, the writer, one 
of many thousands, heard the resonant voice of 
President Harding, speaking over the body of the 
Unknown Soldier in the marble amphitheater at 
Arlington, Virginia, say: ‘‘We are met to-day to 
pay an impersonal tribute. The name of him whose 
body lies before us took flight with his imperishable 
soul, We know not whence he came, but only that 
his death marks him with the everlasting glory of 
an American dying for his country.’’ And so on to 
the end of the address, and the echoing of the artil- 


MODERN MIRACLES 945 


lery from the Virginia hills, and the sounding of 
taps. Every word was clear and distinct.. Not a 
syllable was blurred. At the same time a vast audi- 
ence in San Francisco listened to the ceremonies 
and, as it were, ‘‘stood beside the casket’’ of 
America’s hero. The reverent thousands on either 
ocean-side joined with the assembled multitudes at 
Arlington in singing America and in repeating the 
Lord’s Prayer. New miracles of wire telephony 
have made possible the union of the whole nation in 
a single audience. Before events like these, the 
miracles of old pale into insignificance. 

Let us go back nearly forty years to that lab- 
oratory in Karlshruhe, Germany, where Heinrich 
Hertz, the brilhant pupil of Helmholtz and the 
prophet of a matchless revelation of the Unseen, 
first demonstrated the properties of wireless waves. 
Sparks of the divine were those discharges of the 
Leyden jar, lighting the way to the conquest of a 
vast new realm of hitherto unsuspected possibili- 
ties. <A little later in the garden of his father’s 
estate, we see the Italian youth, Marconi, realize the 
dream of practical wireless telegraphy. We follow 
him a few years after to the rock-bound coast of 
Newfoundland and watch him, tense with expec- 
tancy, as he listens for the three clicks of the 
telephone receiver which are to tell him of the tri- 
umph of transoceanic wireless. The rest has been 
a matter of detail, the further expression of the 
Divine Immanence through a multitude of minds. 
A miracle of overshadowing significance is this 
transmission and reception of speech and music 
through the medium of the intangible ether. 


246 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


The more recent miracles of modern science did 
not come one by one, in isolated loneliness with long 
intervals between. Toward the close of the last 
century and the beginning of the present, the world 
was carried forward on a great wave of scientific 
discovery into immense new spaces of the hitherto 
unknown. Sir William Crookes discovered the 
cathode rays, emitted from the negative pole of an 
excited vacuum tube; and Sir J. J. Thomson and 
others showed that these rays consist of infinites- 
imally small particles of negative electricity, called 
electrons, the raw material of atoms, the fire mist, 
nebule and solar systems. At last men were find- 
ing the key to the very ante-room to the ages-old 
mysteries of energy and matter. And then one day, 
Conrad Rontgen, working in his laboratory, ob- 
tained a wonderful new light,—a light whose mar- 
velous rays would penetrate opaque matter and 
reveal in shadowy, ghost-like silhouettes the struc- 
tures of many objects. These X-rays, exceedingly 
short waves in the ether produced at the rate of 
three quintillion per second, as all the world knows, 
have become one of the most important agencies in 
medical diagnosis and the alleviation of human ills. 
Do we not instinctively feel that revelations go 
beneficent are immeasurably more worthy of Him 
who animates the tides of life than lawless ‘‘signs 
and wonders’? wrought to awe the superstitious 
minds of ignorant peoples? 

The ‘‘mystery’’ of radium, the alchemy of its 
transmutation, its vast reservoirs of subatomic 
energy and wonderful properties have not yet 


MODERN MIRACLES Q47 


ceased to enchant the minds of the multitude, even in 
this day of super-miracles. And why should this 
divine revelation of atomic secrets ever cease to 
hold in reverent wonder the thought of men? Al- 
ready this new element, obtained by Madame and 
Pierre Curie after the most prodigious research in 
the history of analytical chemistry, has thrown a 
flood of light upon centuries-old problems of 
science. It gives a possible explanation of the 
source of the solar fires. It helps us to determine 
the age of the earth. It reveals the structure of the 
atom. And it holds a vision of sources of energy 
of such dizzy vastness as to bewilder thought and 
intoxicate the imagination. Where the path will 
lead, upon which scientists have entered, no man 
dares predict. But that the sequel of this unfolding 
of the divine will be a glorious one, there is no 
shadow of doubt. 

We might speak of the fulfillment of that won- 
derful prophecy of Tennyson, when in 1840 he 
immortalized his vision of the conquest of the air 
in the following lines: 


For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could 


see, 

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that 
would be; 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of 
magic sails, 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with 
costly bales; 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there 
rain’d a ghastly dew 

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the 
central blue; .. . 


248 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


To mount into the air like the birds, to soar like 
the eagle, to ride the billows of the sky as a majestic 
ship sails the sea,—that is a miracle of such recent 
accomplishment that it almost seems like a passing 
dream, from which we may even yet awake. The 
persistent knockings of the Wrights at the door of 
mystery brought it to pass, and the exploits of a 
host of daring aviators hold promise of still other 
miracles to come. 

And what shall we say of the stupendous intel- 
lectual achievement of Albert Einstein and its large 
measure of verification by the leading scientists 
of the world? The mental processes of a great 
thinker found their counterpart in the realities of 
the universe. ‘To use an oft-quoted truth, he 
thought God’s thoughts after Him. In one impor- 
tant realm of the eternal verities, he has undoubt- 
edly approached more closely to the ultimate 
solution of certain fundamental problems of far- 
reaching significance than has any preceding phi- 
losopher. It will be to the everlasting glory of this 
physicist from across the seas that he has taken us a 
long way nearer to an understanding of the ages-old 
mysteries of time and space. 

Yes, prophets of God are these modern miracle- 
workers, as truly as were those whose words and 
deeds are recorded in the sacred literature of any 
time or language. So long as the universe stands, 
the progressive revelation of the Divine Immanence 
will never cease. The false idea that revelation dis- 
appeared with the close of the Biblical era is an 
irreverent reflection upon the Deity and a gross 


MODERN MIRACLES 949 


injustice to the great apostles of truth in succeeding 
centuries. [very achievement that leads to larger 
knowledge, deeper insight, and more spiritual con- 
ceptions is a manifestation of the divine in the uni- 
verse and proof of the divinity of man, 


CHAPTER X 
THe Bucasoo or Natorgat Law 


Wuen Johann Kepler formulated the cosmic 
rules which express the undeviating movements of 
the planets, the world caught its first glimpse of 
a universe of law and order. A vast realm of the 
celestial spaces seemed to be redeemed from the 
influence of a capricious Being and His attendant 
hosts. Copernicus and Galileo had added the solar 
system to the known domain of the heavenly bodies. 
And the great Scientist of Pisa, Padua and Florence 
had discovered the modes of action of moving bod- 
ies at the surface of the earth. Slowly through the 
mists of many centuries of ignorance and super- 
stition began to penetrate the hght of a new 
knowledge. These pioneers in the task of attaining 
to a better understanding of this vast universe of 
which we are a part had begun to draw aside the 
veil which had hitherto enshrouded in deepest 
mystery the marvelous uniformity and precision of 
action which hold sway in the occurrence of natural 
phenomena. A reign of perfect law began to emerge 
above the mental horizons of thinking men. 

Still at first, men were not deeply disturbed by 
this discovery of natural law. The full import of 
its mistaken significance but slowly dawned upon 

250 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW 251 


their minds. And then came Sir Isaac Newton 
and the Universal Law of Gravitation, if we ex- 
cept Einstein’s achievement, the most stupendous 
generalization in the history of science. Of course 
Newton did not discover the fact of gravitation. 
That had been a matter of common experience 
from the remotest antiquity. The Greek philos- 
opher, Anaxagoras, had even suggested that the 
same force which attracts objects at the surface 
of the earth might also hold the heavenly bodies in 
their orbits. But to no one before the time of New- 
ton had occurred the possibility that this force 
might be a common property of all matter and ex- 
tend its influence to the uttermost depths of space. 
Much less had any one dreamed of being able to 
demonstrate the law of its action. And then in one 
of those supreme moments of divine revelation, 
which have repeatedly punctuated the progress of 
the race, there flashed across the mind of this intel- 
lectual giant of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, the idea that the moon might be a falling 
body obeying the same laws that Galileo had dis- 
covered a generation before. Still how could he 
prove it? That was the mighty query which chal- 
lenged his genius. All the world now knows that he 
solved the problem and demonstrated the seeming 
paradox of a falling body which constantly ap- 
proaches the earth and yet never reaches it, To 
explain this apparent contradiction, Newton for- 
mulated the First Law of Motion: Every body tends 
to continue in its state of rest or of uniform motion 
in a straight line, unless acted upon by an outside 


952 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


force. To him it was as clear as sunlight that the 
resultant path of the original straight-line motion 
of the moon together with its accelerated motion 
toward the center of the earth would be the precise 
curve which our satellite forever follows in its end- 
less journey through space. The mathematical 
demonstration of the accuracy of the law broadened 
the earth-bound souls of men and inaugurated a new 
era in scientific thought. 

- Still the theological significance of this epoch- 
making discovery was so totally at variance with 
the traditional teaching of the church that Newton 
was immediately denounced as an atheist. The 
truth was unwelcome, just as it is in certain re- 
ligious circles to-day. Even Leibnitz, a mathe- 
matician scarcely inferior to Newton himself, re- 
fused to accept the theory. Doubtless we should 
not blame these earnest souls too severely, for the 
idea of law was startlingly opposed to their notions 
of the divine plan of operating the universe. Every 
new discovery of law seemed to rule out God. 
Physical forces seemed to take the place of the 
direct action of the Deity. A force, like that of 
gravity, and its unvarying law of action appeared 
to be a thing in itself, completely independent of a 
divine source. Men could not see that a natural 
law inevitably implies a Divine Lawgiver,—that a 
law which is amenable to human intelligence must 
be the expression of thought and purpose. They 
could not rise, all in a moment, to the lofty con- 
ception of a natural law as being nothing more than 
a method of divine action. To minds imbued with 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW Diss 


the crude notion of an absentee God, fostered for 
centuries by St. Augustine and the church, this 
invasion of law seemed to destroy the world of 
sacred theological conceptions, even as the sweep 
of Galileo’s telescope across the heavens had 
smashed the celestial spheres of the scientific 
romancers of the early centuries of the Christian 
era. Simple as it now seems, these worshipers of a 
sacred past did not understand that the law of 
gravitation only expresses the way in which the 
universal immanence of the Creator ceaselessly 
manifests itself in one important phase of cosmic 
activity. Instead, they saw law usurping the place 
of God. ‘To their minds He was being crowded out 
of His universe. That the laws seemed to be true 
was as dust in the balance. With a loyalty to mis- 
taken theological notions amounting almost to 
fanaticism, these zealous souls defended their God 
as valiantly as ever countrymen came to the rescue 
of their king. All honor to them for their zeal, but 
let us take a lesson from their example and not in 
enlightened America to-day repeat the same colossal 
blunder in fresh fields of equally important scien- 
tific discovery. 

Newton did not rest content with his explanation 
of the motion of the moon. In a short time he had 
shown that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are a 
direct result of the law of gravitation. Within its 
majestic sway, he brought, not only the motions of 
the planets and their satellites, but those of the 
comets and the meteors as well. In accordance with 
this all embracing law, Halley calculated the path 


254 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


and period of the comet which bears his name. Sir 
William Herschel, who, in a moment of triumph, 
exclaimed, ‘‘I have looked farther into space than 
ever human being did before me. I have observed 
stars of which the light takes two millions of years 
to travel to this globe,’? one evening in March, 
1781, brought within the range of his telescope a 
new world. It was the planet Uranus, and astron- 
omers soon determined that its motion, aside from 
certain deviations, or ‘‘perturbations’’ as they are 
called, is true to the Newtonian law. Still, it was 
felt that these deviations required explanation. 
Accordingly two astronomers, Leverrier in France 
and Adams in England, sought the solution of the 
problem. Independently of each other and solely 
on the basis of the law of gravitation, these men 
calculated the path and mass of a planet which, 
through its attraction for Uranus, would produce 
precisely the effects observed. Immediately upon 
the completion of his work, Leverrier telegraphed to 
the Royal Observatory in Berlin, stating that, should 
its telescope be pointed to a certain spot in the 
heavens, a hitherto unknown planet would be 
brought to view. We now know that this supreme 
faith in the universality of divine law was rewarded 
by the discovery of the planet Neptune. 

No greater example of faith is to be found in all 
history. And it was faith in God,—faith in the 
uniformity of His modes of action and in the trust- 
worthiness of His universe. In one vast realm of 
cosmic action, God did not operate in a capricious 
or irregular way. A large area of the universe 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW 255 


had been won over from the unknown to the 
known. The frontiers of human knowledge had been 
immeasurably extended. Ancient barriers to intel- 
lectual progress were beginning to be broken down, 
but the inertia arising from fossilized forms of 
error was tremendously difficult to overcome. It 
has always been thus, and scarcely less so in this 
age of boasted enlightenment than it was in the 
early days of scientific discovery. Intrenched 
ignorance and content therewith are traditional 
foes to the irresistible forward movement of civil- 
ization into larger fields of knowledge and wider 
intellectual horizons. And yet such glorious scien- 
tific achievements as the discovery of Neptune 
made irreparable breaches in the ranks of those 
whose faces were forever turned toward the past. 
Slowly the truth about the universe asserted itself, 
and the new conception, based upon actual facts, 
was found to be immeasurably more significant and 
beautiful than had been the crude imaginings of 
ignorant peoples. And of immense import, too, is 
the fact that these discoveries did not weaken the 
religious faith of those pioneers whose patient 
researches unveiled something of the eternal mys- 
teries of the heavenly hosts. Few coneurred with 
the astronomer who said, ‘‘I have searched the 
heavens with my telescope, and I can not find God 
there.’?’ Gradually, the starry firmament was 
found to be ‘‘erystallized mathematics’’ and, so far 
as men’s knowledge extended, a perfect system of 
undeviating law and order reigned. And yet it be- 
came increasingly apparent to thoughtful minds 


256 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


that a universe cast in a mathematical mold and 
operating in accordance with invariable laws of cos- 
mic action must be the product of a Supreme 
Thinker. Otherwise men could have found no mean- 
ing in it. The simplest interpretation of Nature 
would have been utterly impossible. The law of 
gravitation would have remained an unsearchable 
mystery to the end of time. Ignorance would for- 
ever sit upon the throne, even as it did throughout 
the long night preceding the dawn of scientific 
triumphs, 

Natural laws do not explain why the universe 
acts as it does, but only how it acts. All science 
can discover about physical forces is their habits of 
action. Misunderstanding of these simple truths 
has been responsible for a deal of theological con- 
troversy. And the universe is not governed by 
laws, in the sense that an outside power issues de- 
erees to which it compels obedience. Natural laws 
are simply the modes of universal procedure accord- 
ing to which the Divine Immanence, which is forever 
and everywhere present, ceaselessly expresses itself. 
They are but the uniform lines of behavior along 
which the Eternal Life of all created things 
manifests. But it is utterly unthinkable that 
physical forces and natural laws could operate in 
perfect harmony without the indwelling presence of 
a Divine Being, whose life and modes of action 
supply the energy and guidance without which the 
universe would go to smash and resolve itself into 
irretrievable chaos. No, let us rid our minds of the 
false idea that physical forces and natural laws sit 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW 250 


over against the Deity in perpetual hostility to the 
supremacy of His divine prerogatives. One would 
be as impossible without the other as light without 
darkness. As well try to think of an individual 
without a personality, as to attempt to conceive 
of God apart from those multitudinous forms of 
divine action which we call natural laws. There is 
nothing whatever in the idea of natural law to 
interfere in the slightest degree with the most 
spiritual conception of the relation existing be- 
tween God and His universe. What the flower 
is to the life which informs the stalk and root, 
so are natural phenomena to Him who is the 
Soul of the universe and the source of its being. 
The laws of life,—mere formulations of methods of 
growth,—are as vital to one as to the other. There 
is no more ground for hostility between the ideas 
of natural law and divine action than there is be- 
tween our knowledge of the expansive force of 
steam and the controlling hand of the engineer on 
the throttle. God and natural law are as insep- 
arable as the north and south poles of a magnet. A 
natural law in and of itself is an impossible abstrac- 
tion. Gravitation is not a ‘‘rebellious Titan’’ setting 
up a little kingdom of his own in opposition to the 
sovereignty of God. The discovery of the law of 
its operation simply enables us to catch a glimpse 
of how God acts. And so of every other physical 
force and natural law. Any view which erects a 
physical force and its mode of action into a little 
god, unconsciously at least, reverts to the barbaric 
idea of many gods. 


258 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


As has already been intimated, the strange notion 
arose that the extension of the realm of natural law 
automatically vacated the presence of God. Wide 
areas of the universe became godless. The discov- 
ery of a reign of law seemed to leave nothing for 
God to do. Many have agreed with Comte that 
‘‘the time has arrived when we may escort the 
Creator to the edges of the universe and bow him 
out with thanks for his past services.’’ In the 
theological view, the only corner of the universe left 
for the exercise of His capricious action, through 
divine intervention and miracle, was that in which 
the reign of law had not been traced. For long, 
comets, thunder-bolts and physical disease were 
thought to be beyond the reach of scientific ex- 
planation. But these, too, have been shorn of their 
supernatural origin. These theological apostles of 
a losing cause, fighting desperately in defense of 
traditional error and with their faces forever turned 
away from the fresh revelations of God’s eternal 
truth, have lost every battle in the history of the 
centuries-old controversy. As they view the rapidly 
dwindling area of their little domain, the only 
province left to their supposed guardianship seems 
to be the creation of the universe by divine fiat at 
a comparatively recent moment of cosmic time. 
The law of evolution is the modern octopus which 
must be slain, if the divinity of the universe and 
Christian faith are not to perish. Miracles, too, 
seem to be passing into eclipse, and for that ancient 
legacy of ignorance and superstition, the defenders 
of a totally false conception of God and Nature 
valiantly contend. 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW 259 


But, as has been shown elsewhere in these pages, 
the law of evolution has been amply established by 
an overwhelming wealth of direct evidence, and the 
fiction of miracles has been traced to its origin. 
The battle still rages, but the theological cause is 
forever lost. Just as light dispels the darkness, so 
does the irresistible conquest of truth overcome 
error, however sincere and devoted its misguided 
defenders may be. Evolution is simply God’s way 
of working. It does not eliminate Him. It shows 
creation as progressive, never ceasing. It extends 
the time of accomplishment into the past for untold 
eons and carries it forward into all eternity. 
Against an hypothesis of special creation without 
a particle of evidence in its support, it places a 
theory so abundantly attested by actual facts that 
scientists already recognize it as a law little less 
comparable in validity to the law of gravitation. If 
theologians are to overthrow it, they must bring in 
opposition something more than the myths and 
legends of the prehistoric past. The time has long 
since passed when Scripture may be quoted in de- 
fiance of natural laws. Through the Scriptures 
runs the strong tide of spiritual truth, but not that 
of literal scientific fact. The tragedy of the whole 
controversy has been failure to recognize this out- 
standing truth. 

Scientists, too, have not been without fault. The 
erass materialism of a generation ago, typified by 
the school of Ernest Haeckel, was as stupid as the 
unreasoning opposition of theological dogmatists. 
The attempt to explain the universe by the operation 


260 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


of purely mechanical forces and natural laws, de- 
void of any directive agency, was as crude as any 
of the impossible notions of the defenders of the 
faith. The erection of the scientific abstractions of 
matter, force and energy into distinct entities, 
capable of independent action, and the surrender of 
the universe to blind chance were on a par with the 
superstitious spirit creations of prehistoric times. 
That the law of evolution was at first regarded as 
dispensing with the necessity of God is no credit 
to the early exponents of this epoch-making view 
of creation. The evolution of the earth and organic 
life from very simple beginnings through the action 
of blind mechanical forces and the operation of self- 
directing natural laws is strictly a sleight-of-hand 
performance. Given the potentialities of solar sys- 
tems and living things in the latent energy and 
cosmic laws of primeval chaos, and of course the 
scientist can bring them forth, just as the juggler 
pulls from his plug-hat all that he has magically 
concealed within it. But the real problem is still 
there. Only a simplification of words has occurred. 
The facts are as mysterious as ever, Back of these 
potentialities of infinite magnitude must stand a 
first cause as big as the universe itself. And that 
can be nothing less than what the theologian calls 
God and the scientist designates as the Divine Im- 
manence of all creation. Wherever natural laws 
prevail, we now see only the manifestation of the 
thought and action of the Supreme Lawgiver. True, 
many scientists do not yet accept this view, just as 
many theologians still cling to the dogmas of an 


THE BUGABOO OF NATURAL LAW 261 


outgrown religious faith. But whatever the ulti- 
mate truth may be, we can be perfectly sure that 
sometime in the eternal years of God it will mightily 
prevail. Neither the theorizing of earth-bound scien- 
tists nor the gross misconceptions of dogmatic 
theologians can stay its triumph. 

From the early beginnings of Kepler, Galileo 
and Newton to the vast achievements of the nine- 
teenth and twentieth centuries, the discovery of 
these divine methods of cosmic action has been one 
of the chief ends of scientific research. Laplace 
formulated the Nebular Hypothesis to account for 
the origin of solar systems. The principles of 
chemical action discovered by Priestley, Cavendish, 
Scheele and Lavoisier brought to an end the reign 
of the alchemist and redeemed a large area of nat- 
ural phenomena from capricious influence. Frank- 
lin robbed the thunderbolt of its lawless terror. 
Faraday sought out the laws of electro-magnetic 
action and laid the foundation for the marvelous 
electrical achievements of the present age. Watt, 
Fulton and Stephenson harnessed the giant steam, 
Berzelius, for half a century the ezar of chemistry, 
did the pioneer work in determining the relative 
weights of atoms, and the great Russian Men- 
deléeff with his discovery of the periodic law of the 
elements unlocked the ante-room to the atomic 
mysteries. Bunsen through the invention of the 
spectroscope enabled scientists to analyze the stars 
and determine their physical states. Helmholtz and 
Lord Kelvin established the law of the conservation 
of energy. Morse, Bell, Hertz, Marconi, Rontgen, 


262 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Madame Curie and the Wrights, to mention only a 
few of the great names in recent scientific achieve- 
ments, have made conquest after conquest in unrav- 
eling the ages-old secrets of the universe and in 
extending the domains of natural law. What 
the future holds no man can say, but that it will be 
a glorious one there can be no shadow of doubt. So 
long as the race is here, the revelations of God will 
never cease. ‘ 

Natural law, stripped of its artificial framework 
and false interpretations, is nothing more nor less 
than a divine mode of action. 


CHAPTER XI 
Atoms, MoLecuLes anp HLEctTRONS 


Wuart myriads of infinitesimally small worlds 
the modern scientist has disclosed! Unseen, utterly 
beyond the penetrating gaze of the most powerful 
microscope, and yet as well known as the cobble- 
stones beneath our feet, these miniature systems of 
primeval units are the raw materials from which 
creation will forever spring anew. Life may dis- 
appear, worlds come and go, this universe resolve 
itself into nebular chaos, and still atoms, molecules, 
and electrons, indestructible and eternal, will con- 
stitute the building blocks with which the Great 
Architect will again fashion stars and solar systems. 
Over against the inconceivably stupendous cosmic 
systems of the celestial spaces stand these exceed- 
ingly tiny worlds of marvelous beauty and exquisite 
perfection. Unthinkably great, unimaginably small, 
and yet everywhere a perfect reign of law and or- 
der,—that is the tremendous contrast and the divine 
harmony which this universe presents. 

But why disturb our minds with thoughts of 
entities so infinitesimally small as to be almost in- 
conceivable? Because they reveal the secrets of the 
ages. They usher us into the very ante-room of the 
eternal mysteries of energy and matter. They bring 

263 


264. THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


the dream of the alchemist to pass. They disclose 
wonders more marvelous than were ever envisioned 
in the soul of the boldest dreamer. The majestic 
sway of these cosmic units extends from the mi- 
nutest particle of matter to the remotest bounds of 
space. They are, as it were, the threads in the loom 
on which the Master Artist weaves the delicate glow 
of the beautiful Aurora Borealis and the faint soft 
beams of the zodiacal light. An electric current is 
but a stream of electrons moving along a conductor. 
The wonderful achievements of the radio art are 
due to swarms of electrons within a vacuum tube, 
To-morrow, these tireless servants of men may make 
possible the miracle of the wireless transmission of 
electric power. And should the scientist discover 
the secret key to the controlled liberation of the im- 
measurably vast reservoirs of energy locked up 
within the electronic systems of the atoms, the race 
would, indeed, stand at a turning-point in its evo- 
lution of such dizzy possibilities as to dwarf into 
insignificance all the proud achievements of pre- 
ceding ages. Why should we study atoms, mole- 
cules and electrons? Because they bring us into a 
larger understanding of the fundamental realities 
of the universe. Because the pursuit of knowledge 
and of a deeper insight into the revelations of the 
Divine Immanence is possibly the greatest calling 
among men. Because this new knowledge makes 
possible a more perfect harmony between the finite 
spirit of man and the infinite Soul of God. 

We are inclined to fancy that the scientist is 
thinking wholly along visionary lines when he talks — 


ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 265 


in such a matter-of-fact way about physical and 
chemical units which he has never seen and may 
never hope to see. Still, Millikan, the greatest 
physicist in America, states that ‘‘we can now count 
the exact number of molecules in any given volume 
or in any known weight of any homogeneous sub- 
stance with even more certainty than we can count 
the population of a city or a state.’’* Think of the 
extraordinary precision with which he places the 
molecular population of a cubic centimeter of air 
(a small thimbleful) at ‘‘exactly 27.05 billions of 
billions.’’ We can not go into the methods by which 
these results are obtained, but we may rely with 
perfect confidence upon their accuracy. 

Possibly we may gain some faint conception of 
the relative sizes of these cosmic units. <A cubic inch 
of any gas under normal conditions will contain four 
hundred and forty-one quintillion molecules and still 
leave ‘‘great volumes’’ of space for billions and bil- 
lions more to be crowded between them. Matter is 
porous, and the spaces between the molecules are 
enormously larger than the molecules themselves. 
A considerable quantity of salt may be dissolved in 
water with only very slight increase in volume. 
Gold may be dissolved in liquid mercury. In each 
case the molecules of the solid simply make their 
way between the molecules of the liquid, and still 
they are separated by relatively great distances. 
The atmosphere about our planet extends outward 
to a distance of possibly fifty miles. But, if we 
could suddenly cool it to two hundred degrees below 


*Contributions of Science to Religion, D, Appleton & Company. 


266 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


zero Centigrade, it would form a layer of liquid 
air upon the surface of the earth only thirty-five 
feet deep. And still the molecules would be far from 
touching. A piece of beaten gold-leaf but one four- 
hundred-thousandth of an inch in thickness still 
contains many layers of molecules. A soap film 
may be blown to a thickness of one three-millionth 
of an inch, but even yet it is estimated that the 
molecules lie twenty or thirty tiers in depth. The 
thinnest film obtainable is that of oil spreading 
upon the surface of water. Although its thickness 
is but a fifty-millionth of an inch, it contains a dou- 
ble layer of molecules with an intervening space 
much greater than the diameters of the molecules 
themselves. A grain of musk will scent a room for 
years. A single grain of indigo will distinetly color 
a ton of water. A tiny bubble of chlorine gas will 
impart its odor to every cubic centimenter of air 
in a large room. When we consider the countless 
billions of molecules which must be poured forth to 
accomplish these results, we gain some more or less 
shadowy notion of the exceeding smallness of one 
of these individual physical units. 

But, if molecules seem small, what shall we say 
of atoms? The diameter of an atom is a million 
times smaller than the thickness of the finest hair. — 
A cubic centimeter of hydrogen may contain fifty- 
four quintillion atoms, and yet each atom is an elec- 
tronic system, the individual members of which are 
as far apart relatively to their size as the planets 
in our solar system. On an average it would take 
four hundred million atoms side by side to measure 


ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 267 


an inch. It requires a quintillion of atoms of gold 
to weigh fifteen grains. Sir Oliver Lodge estimates 
that the weight of an atom of hydrogen, the lightest 
of the elements, is a million million million times 
less than that of a grain of lyeopodium powder. Or, 
we may say that it weighs twenty-five ten-thou- 
sandths of a grain divided by one followed by 
twenty-one zeros. : 

It is the structure of the atom, however, which 
is now of chief interest to the scientist. In the more 
than two thousand years intervening between the 
happy guess of the brilliant Greek philosopher, 
Democritus, and the very recent conceptions of 
marvelous electronic systems of atomic units, little 
change in fundamental ideas occurred. Democritus 
imagined hard, smooth, indivisible particles, the cos- 
mic bricks which together with empty space made 
up the multitudinous forms of matter. No prob- 
lem presented itself. The laboratory and experi- 
mentai science were unknown. And yet this view 
was surprisingly similar to the theory so ably set 
forth by the English schoolmaster, John Dalton, 
a century and a quarter ago. But there was this 
vast difference: Dalton’s idea of atoms rested upon 
a solid basis of experimental fact. Later quanti- 
tative investigations of scientists demonstrated 
conclusively that there is some counterpart in 
reality to these atomic units. Indeed, it became 
possible to determine with the utmost accuracy the 
relative weights in which the atoms of the elements 
combine to form chemical compounds. Berzelius, 
the great Swedish chemist of a century ago, devoted 


968 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


his life largely to this work, and Professor Theo- 
dore Richards of Harvard has for many years been 
engaged upon a revision of the atomic weights, 
which constitutes one of the most accurate and 
important pieces of research in the history of 
science. Professor Richards characterizes these 
atomic numbers as the most significant set of physi- 
cal constants in the universe. For in the event of 
the dissolution of our solar system into primeval 
chaos, it is strictly in accord with these relative 
weights that the atoms would recombine to form 
new compounds in the cosmic evolution of another 
system. Doubtless for all time to come, the atom 
will remain what it is to-day, the practical working 
unit of the chemist. 

Before we take a peep within the atom itself, let 
us consider briefly the great generalization known 
as the Periodic Law of the elements. A little more 
than a half century ago, the Russian chemist Men- 
deléeff and the German Lothar Meyer, working in- 
dependently of each other, discovered an apparent 
fundamental relationship existing between the prop- 
erties of the elements and their atomic weights. 
In the beautiful language of the late Robert 
Kennedy Duncan, ‘‘ Just as the pendulum returns 
again in its swing, just as the moon returns in its 
orbit, just as the advancing year ever brings the 
rose of spring, so do the properties of the elements 
periodically recur as the weights of the atoms 
rise.’’* When the elements were arranged in the 


*The New Knowledge, by permission of Laidlow Brothers, Inc.~ 
publishers. 


ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 269 


order of their atomic weights, it was found that 
every elghth element seemed to repeat in large 
measure the properties of the eighth element BEE 
ceding it. | 

The law did not prove to be quite so simple as 
had at first appeared, but with modifications it has 
remained to this day as a guide of tremendous im- 
portance in the correlation of known facts and the 
discovery of new ones. In the midst of seeming 
chaos was found a reign of perfect order. The 
darkness of the unknown broke into the sunlight 
of knowledge. <A larger glimpse of the eternal 
methods of the Divine Immanence had been vouch- 
safed to men. 

Toward the close of the last century, in rapid 
succession came those wonderful revelations of the 
cathode rays, X-rays, and radioactivity with their 
introduction to a real knowledge of atomic struc- 
tures. One of the first important items of discovery 
in this new realm of scientific romance was the 
electron. Of whatever substance the cathode of a 
Crookes’ tube might consist, it shot off at high 
velocities small, negatively charged particles, which 
were designated as electrons. Scarcely in the his- 
tory of scientific research had a more significant 
discovery been made. At last it seemed probable 
that the common primordial stuff out of which the 
atoms of all the elements are constructed had been 
found. 

Then Sir J. J. Thomson showed that these new 
citizens of the subatomic worlds consist of nothing 
but pure negative electricity, and demonstrated that 


270 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


a moving charge of electricity will possess mass 
and inertia and be characterized by all the proper- 
ties of matter. Just consider what a revelation this 
was: hard and fast matter had become intangible, 
elusive, Imaginary; the atmosphere, the ocean 
deeps, the rock-ribbed hills, and the substance of 
living organisms had all been resolved into moving 
points of electrical energy; matter, except as a con- 
venient term of reference, had ceased to exist. Or 
we may say that matter and energy had become 
identical. Never before had men come so close to 
a knowledge of ultimate realities. When Thomson 
had measured the mass of the electron and found it 
to be about one eighteen-hundredth as heavy as the 
hydrogen atom, the way was paved for the first 
real insight into that hitherto undiscovered realm 
of the subatomic. 

Let us look within this marvelous electrical 
edifice known as an atom. For a more convenient 
view, we will magnify it ten billion times and obtain 
an average diameter of three feet. But what a 
revelation! Instead of the hard sphere of the 
ancients, we behold a porous structure, like the 
universe, very empty. Figuratively speaking, we 
see a vast solar system with central sun and revolv- 
ing planets. In amazement, we wonder who ever 
could have thought it solid. Between the electrons 
themselves and between them and the central, 
positively-charged nucleus are vast dreary wastes 
of space, relatively greater than the celestial spaces 
between the members of our solar system. An ex- 
amination of different atomic structures reveals 


ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 271 


a fundamental similarity. In each we find a central 
nucleus and planetary electrons. One very strik- 
ing fact, however, compels our attention. Although 
the nucleus is magnified ten billion times, this posi- 
tively-charged central ‘‘sun’’ is no larger than a 
pin-point. Its mass, however, is nearly two 
thousand times that of an electron. And let it be 
remembered that we are not dealing with an imag- 
inary realm. Every statement is based upon facts 
as incontrovertible as that two and two make four. 

The researches of Moseley, a brilliant young 
Iinglish physicist who was instantly killed by a 
Turkish bullet before Gallipoli in 1915, have made 
it exceedingly probable that there are only ninety- 
two elements in the universe, of which eighty-seven 
have been discovered. The atom of hydrogen con- 
sists of a central nucleus and one electron. Helium 
has two electrons, and so on in regular order to 
uranium, which has ninety-two. Upon each nucleus 
are as many unneutralized charges of positive elec- 
tricity as there are electrons in its outer sphere of 
influence. Thus, we now know that the different 
atoms of the elements are simply varying aggre- 
gations of these fundamental cosmic units. The 
vast complexity of the universe resolves itself into 
a wonderful simplicity. In these recent triumphs 
of scientific research, we have come very close to 
the ‘‘Hternal Energy’’ of Herbert Spencer, from 
which all things proceed. 

In the natural alchemy of radium and the disin- 
tegration of its atom, we have direct experimental 
proof of the electronic systems of subatomic struc- 


272 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


ture. Radium, spontaneously and without ceasing, 
gives off three kinds of rays,—alpha, beta and 
gamma. The alpha rays have been proved to be pos- 
itively charged atoms of helium shot off with a veloc- 
ity of about twenty thousand miles per second. The 
beta rays turned out to be identical with the elec- 
trons of the Crookes’ tube, projected in a constant 
stream with velocities ranging from sixty to one 
hundred eighty thousand miles per second. And 
the gamma rays have been shown to be X-Rays, 
differing in no way from those discovered by 
Rontgen. In this disintegration, new elements 
arise, and large quantities of energy are liberated, 
due to the emission of electrons. Other elements, 
chiefly uranium and thorium, have been shown to 
possess similar properties. Indeed, uranium is 
thought to be the ancestor of radium. Possibly, all 
of the elements may be found to exhibit this re- 
markable fact of atomic disintegration to some de- 
gree. Could our view extend backward into the 
infinite reaches of the past and forward throughout 
the countless eons of the future, we might behold 
an evolution of the elements, birth, maturity and 
decay, comparable with that of organic structures 
and the possible evolution of solar systems. 

The key to the vast reservoirs of subatomic 
energy, exhibited in the natural disintegration of 
radium and known to be locked up within the elec- 
tronic systems of other elements, is one of the most 
fascinating goals in the future investigations of 
these indefatigable searches after the eternal mys- 
teries of the unseen, According to Professor 





Courtesy Scientific American. 


THE ATOM—A MINIATURE SOLAR SYSTEM 


The top view shows an atom of hydrogen magnified until its orbit 

is 186,000,000 miles in diameter. On that scale the nucleus of the 

atom becomes 3.5 miles in diameter and its solitary electron 6,500 

miles. Is it any wonder that when these electrons, moving with 

their tremendous velocities, break loose from their moorings, as in 

the disintegration of radium, they should liberate vast quantities 
of energy? 


iv? 





ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 273 


Le Bon, of Paris, the energy contained within the 
smallest French coin is equal to eighty million 
horse-power. <A single pound of ordinary matter 
possesses enough latent energy to drive all the 
ships of our navy. Sir Oliver Lodge estimated that 
the energy within the atoms of an ounce of water, 
if liberated, would be able to lift the German fleet 
sunk at Scapa Flow and place it on the mainland. 
The power contained in the atoms of a single 
breath, in the opinion of Robert Kennedy Duncan, 
would run the workshops of the world. Shali we 
ever be able to tap these inexhaustible founts of 
energy and control them in safety for the service of 
men? Time alone can tell. It may be but the next 
step in the evolution of our knowledge of the Divine 
Immanence. The revelations of the present give 
promise of still more marvelous ones to come. 
Knowledge, gaining momentum enormously with 
each new accession, is bound to expand, quite pos- 
sibly beyond the dreams of the most enlightened 
seers, in the decades and centuries to follow. Faith 
in the immeasurable possibilities of this divinely 
ordered universe and ceaseless knockings at the 
gates of Eternal Truth will bring revelations of 
insight and understanding in equal proportion. 
The invention by Bunsen and Kirchoff of the 
spectroscope, that marvelous instrument for search- 
ing out the mysteries of the heavens, has led to 
revelations of immense significance. The light from 
nebule and stars caught by this instrument and 
passed through its dispersing prism at once dis- 
closes the composition and physical state of its 


274 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


source. The atomic structure of each element pro- 
duces a characteristic spectrum, unduplicated by 
any other substance. This product of human in- 
genuity placed before the eye and brain of man 
reveals the identity of electronic systems, at such 
infinite distances away that the light which bears 
the message may have been a half million years 
en route. In the hands of Sir Norman Lockyer this 
device made known the existence in the atmosphere 
of the sun of prodigious quantities of helium. 
When in later years scientists discovered that 
helium is an atomic disintegration product of ra- 
dium, with its accompanying liberation of energy, a 
possible explanation of the source of solar heat 
became apparent. This and more the spectroscope 
has revealed to a host of patient searchers of the 
celestial spaces. Can we doubt that such rev- 
elations are as truly divine as any which have 
occurred in any other age of world history? Can 
not God speak through the telescope and the spec- 
troscope as certainly as He can through the mystic 
visions of seer and prophet? How did men ever get 
the false idea that the Voice of God has been stilled 
in these later centuries? No greater error was 
ever made. The Divine Immanence was never more 
apparent than it is to-day, and there is no shadow of 
doubt that its manifestations will continue to in- 
crease in even larger measure throughout the ages. 

Is it possible to believe that electronic worlds 
as majestic in their reign of perfect law as the 
stupendous systems of the starry heavens have 
come into existence without the guiding thought and 


ATOMS, MOLECULES AND ELECTRONS 2795 


purpose of an Intelligent Creator? Could blind 
chance and the accidental evolutions of these cos- 
mic units of Eternal Energy result in systems so 
amenable to our human understanding? Utterly 
unthinkable is such a monstrous view. Intelligible 
worlds, whether they be a part of the infinite depths 
of space or constituent members of the ultra-micro- 
scopic realms of the unseen, can never proceed from 
a non-intelligent source. At one with the physical 
energy of atoms, molecules and electrons must be 
the spiritual energy of Him who ensouls the universe. 


CHAPTER XII 
RELATIVITY AND SPirITUAL REALITIES 


Do tHE bewildering paradoxes of relativity and 
the new knowledge which Albert Einstein seems to 
have unveiled for the intellectual contemplation of 
men have any bearing upon the spiritual realities 
of the universe? Has absolute knowledge, like ab- 
solute motion, reached the vanishing point? Just 
as scientists have resolved indestructible matter 
into marvelous systems of intangible subatomic 
energy, is it true that all knowledge is relative? Is 
there nothing, standing in its own right, funda- 
mentally and everlastingly unchangeable? Is 
everything in ceaseless flux? Is the integrity of 
the universe at stake? Does the Einstein theory, 
described by some one as ‘‘a contradiction in terms, 
which, nevertheless, seems to be a demonstrable 
fact,’’ forever discredit what have been universally 
regarded as the eternal verities of existence? 
What is the message of Hinstein to the seekers 
after spiritual truths? <A little consideration of this 
epoch-making intellectual achievement may throw 
light upon these perplexing questions. 

First, let us discover, if possible, something of 
what this strange doctrine, so upsetting to tradi- 
tional beliefs, really teaches. Were it not that 

276 


RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL REALITIES UC 


scientists have verified almost to the letter some of 
the startling predictions of this disturber of uni- 
versal peace, we should long since have con- 
signed Hinstein and his ideas to the realms of pure 
speculation. But, in this new age of shifting view- 
points and intellectual upheavals, facts, whatever 
their import and however revolutionary they may 
be of ancient forms of thought and belief, can not 
be ignored. And Einstein introduces us to a mar- 
velous new world of such entrancing metaphysical 
possibilities as to compel our interest. 

What is the whence and the whither of this uni- 
verse in absolute space, the empty void of infinity 
which begins nowhere and extends beyond the 
limits of our imaginations? And time, whose be- 
ginning and end we can not conceive, what is it? 
Hinstein tells us that the two are indissolubly 
linked in a four-dimensional time-space universe, 
and that both time and space are largely fictions of 
the imagination. Empty space is an absolute un- 
reality. If there were nothing to put in it, space 
would be non-existent. And, if nothing ever hap- 
pened, there would be no need of time. Time is 
Hinstein’s fourth dimension. An object can not 
exist in space without also existing in time. Spa- 
tial existence of any description implies duration. 
The moment one begins construction of any kind 
the time-factor enters into it. An event can not 
be defined without locating it in a three-dimen- 
sional space and stating its position if a fourth 
dimension of time. We might locate a human 
tragedy at the intersection of two streets, on a 


278 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


certain floor of a building or in the basement be- 
low, and at a particular moment of the day. Hach 
element is essential. And the values assigned to 
space and time are wholly relative. To the insect 
at our feet, a tiny mound of earth may be a moun- 
tain and the insect’s brief tenure of life as three 
score years and ten. Hours may sometimes seem as 
fleeting seconds and one short minute as an eter- 
nity. Upon the tragic rescuers at some scene of 
grief and woe time makes no impression, while the 
prisoner at the bar waiting for the verdict of the 
jury ages with the anguish of suspense. In the 
presence of a great sorrow all else fades into insig- 
nificance. Our measurements of time and space are 
all relative,—relative to artificial measuring rods or 
mechanical devices and arbitrary units. There is 
nothing absolutely fixed in the universe. Spatial 
dimensions are determined by reference to man- 
made yardsticks, and our measurements of time 
are relative to the movement of hands over a dial 
and the motions of the heavenly bodies. 

Again, let us take the idea of motion. There 
is no such thing as absolute motion. That is 
EKinstein’s contention. Suppose we drop a heavy 
object from an airplane. It does not fall to the earth 
in a perfectly straight line and with uniform 
velocity. The gravitation of the earth gives to it an 
accelerated velocity toward its center; it still par- 
takes of the forward motion of the airplane; the 
rotation of the earth carries it forward at the rate 
of one thousand miles an hour at the equator; at the 
same time the earth is revolving about the sun with 


RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL REALITIES 279 


a speed of eighteen and a half miles a second; and 
our whole solar system is being borne toward the 
star Vega with a constant velocity of twelve miles a 
second. What seems to the casual observer to be 
a quite simple path turns out to be a long and tor- 
tuous curve. The motions of the heavenly bodies 
are relative. They move with respect to one another, 
but is there any absolute motion through space? 
Kinstein says ‘‘No.’? Indeed, were the sun, moon 
and stars veiled from our view, we could never 
discover any motion. FEiven as it is, our solar sys- 
tem is like a swarm of bees flying within a hive. 
The bees are moving with respect to one another, 
but it is impossible for them to discover whether 
their hive is being carried bodily through space. 
The conclusion of Einstein and his followers is 
that all motion is relative. There is no such thing 
as absolute motion, independent of any factors of 
reference. 

The now famous experiment of Michelson and 
Morley, performed first in 1886 with apparatus of 
the utmost precision, had seemed to demonstrate 
that the earth does not drift through the luminifer- 
ous ether with which scientists have filled all space, 
as 1t would do if our planet possessed any absolute 
motion, and a later experiment of Sir Oliver Lodge 
has shown that the ether is not carried along with 
the earth. It was upon this basis of experimental 
fact that Einstein proceeded to build his theory of 
relativity. It consists of two fundamental propo- 
sitions: all motion is relative, and the velocity of 
light is, not only independent of the motion of its 
source, but the highest possible velocity to obtain. 


280 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


As a result, certain apparently contradictory 
ideas became irresistible conclusions of scientific 
thought. Suppose we could move away from the 
earth with the velocity of light. The hands of a 
clock left behind us upon the earth would seem to 
stand still. All would become motionless. Events 
would cease to occur, We should forever remain 
abreast of a particular set of light waves, and the 
succeeding waves bearing the impress of changing 
events would never overtake us. We should never 
grow old. If we could move with a velocity greater 
than that of light, we should overtake the hght 
waves carrying to the uttermost depths of space the 
ineffaceable stamp of events occurring in earlier 
years, and we should actually grow younger. The 
panorama of history would be reviewed in reverse 
order. The mass of a body, hitherto regarded as 
invariable, would assume infinite proportions at 
the velocity of light. The apparent length of a 
yardstick, moving directly away from us at this 
speed, would be reduced to zero. In other words, 
our judgments of motion, time and space are rela- 
tive to the observer. Were an observer seated upon 
a meteor, moving past our earth with a velocity 
approaching that of light, to witness events here, 
his impressions would be vastly different from 
ours. Both would be right, for it is all a matter of 
relativity. 

Upon a planet whose inhabitants were devoid of 
the sense of sight, would there be any such thing as 
light? Yes and no. In the physiological sense, 
there would not be, but the ether waves would 


RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL REALITIES 281 


exist just the same. The physical fact of light 
would be as real as anywhere else in the universe. 
And so with sound. The roar of Niagara would be 
like the silence of the grave to an utterly deaf per- 
son, but the condensations and rarefactions which 
affect the sense of hearing would be no less real. 
To a color-blind person or to an individual viewing 
a landscape through a bit of colored glass, hues 
seem vastly different from their appearance to one 
of normal vision. To the trained ear of a Beetho- 
ven, the rendering of a piece of classical music may 
give exquisite pleasure, while to the savage it is 
nothing but noise. In the transparent air of desert 
climates, distances are wonderfully deceptive to the 
tenderfoot. He is relating them to the sense im- 
pressions of another atmosphere. The infant may 
believe the toy automobile upon the floor to be as 
large as the distant car upon the highway and a 
near-by man as tall as the neighboring flagstaff. 
He has not yet learned to interpret size in relation 
to distance and perspective. The moon hanging 
just above the horizon appears unduly large. As a 
matter of fact the visual angle which it subtends on 
the retina is no larger than it is when the moon is 
high in the heavens. We are simply judging of its 
size in comparison with the known size of some 
familiar object relatively much nearer than the 
moon, and the result is a false impression. The 
spaces between the electrons within that marvelous 
temple known as an atom are relatively as great 
as the distances between the members of our solar 
system, and yet inconcelvably small, Examples 


282 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


might be multiplied, but enough have been given to 
show that much of our knowledge is relative,—rela- 
tive to the observer, his personality, his state of de- 
velopment, his view-point, his environment and 
many other factors. Our knowledge is often par- 
tial. We see through a glass darkly. We catch a 
glimpse of the truth, we obtain deeper insights, 
larger understandings, and never cease to hope for 
more complete revelations. But absolute truth is 
seldom reached. 

Kinstein’s theory of gravitation is equally 
astonishing. For the first time among men, this 
bold thinker has had the temerity to deny the ex- 
istence of the universal force of gravitation. Such 
a force, he regards as wholly hypothetical. <A 
planet may follow an elliptical path about the sun 
and a body fall to the earth, not because of any 
mysterious attracting force, but because these paths 
prove to be the lines of least resistance through a 
space which has been warped and curved by the 
presence of large masses of matter. How space 
can be curved, is as unpicturable as are the axioms 
of geometry. But one may be as true as the other. 
To quote from my Masters of Science and Inven- 
tion, ‘‘If we should find that a marble placed at 
any point near the walls of an apparently level floor 
always rolled to the center of the room, either one 
of two possible explanations might be given. There 
is some force attracting the marble, or the floor is 
eurved. So with gravitation. Hither there is some 
force of attraction common to all matter, or space 
is curved. Newton took the former view. Einstein 
has chosen the latter,’’ 


RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL REALITIES 283 


An essential item in Hinstein’s curved-space 
theory is the hitherto incredible assumption that a 
ray of light in passing near to a large mass of mat- 
ter like our sun should be warped out of its 
straight-line path. Eclipse observations have since 
abundantly justified this conclusion. And further- 
more the angle of deflection of the ray of light from 
a distant star has been shown to be very close to 
that predicted in advance by Einstein. It is this 
remarkable coincidence, together with the explan- 
ation of a centuries-old discrepancy in the orbit 
of Mercury, which has prevented the side-tracking 
of Einstein and his views. He has looked at the 
universe from a new angle, and has undoubtedly 
approached more closely to a knowledge of certain 
ultimate realities than has any other thinker. 
Again, it is a matter of relativity. 

But what have these considerations to do with 
the spiritual realities of the universe? Just this: 
that judgments of spiritual truths may be at many 
points just as relative as they seem to be in other 
spheres of thought. Outside of the truths of rea- 
son, there is very little that can be absolutely 
proved. That two and two are four is universally 
true. Its validity is independent of time or place. 
This mathematical fact is a rational product of the 
inherent process of human thought. Its denial is 
utterly unthinkable. And so, too, the axioms of 
geometry. Things which are equal to the same 
thing must be equal to each other. Such a proposi- 
tion admits of no argument. It towers above the 
great mass of human concepts like a mountain peak 


284 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


above the lowlands. Just to the extent to which 
our judgments of scientific and spiritual truths 
conform to these standards, they, too, are univer- 
sally true. Often, however, the criteria by which 
we form them are wholly relative. 

Must the mind blindly grope its way through 
these devious paths of human thought, unaided by 
any guiding principle? Is there no test of truth? 
Can we never know when our intellectual processes 
have reached a stable abiding-place? Borden P. 
Bowne, one of the most trenchant philosophers of 
modern times, has laid down this fundamental 
axiom: Whatever is necessary to the mind’s under- 
standing of the facts 1s necessary to the facts 
themselves. All else is relative, changing, subject 
to constant revision. This does not mean, however, 
that the whims of capricious thinkers, the idle 
imaginings of unclear thought, find their counter- 
part in reality. Only those concepts whose denial 
would do violence to human reason may be re- 
garded as true. To me, the idea of God is 
absolutely essential to a rational interpretation of 
the universe. And so is belief in immortality as 
fundamental as the scientific fact of the conserva- 
tion of energy. ‘These are no more relative than 
that two and two are four. But that we have 
reached the ultimate truth concerning the struc- 
ture of matter is an unproved hypothesis. Much 
has already been discovered, but knowledge of the 
final reality is still in the future. It is contingent 
upon further investigation and relative to the in- 
terpretation of new facts. The story of the rocks, 





Coakicnn ick Alife A ete n. 
THE RELATIVITY OF SPACE 


The upper view shows a triangle drawn in a plane of two dimen- 
sions. In attempting to fit this sheet of paper to a sphere the two- 
dimensional space is distorted. In a somewhat analogous manner 
our three-dimensional space may be distorted in the presence of a 
large mass of matter like the sun. To an imaginary being whose 
ideas of space are relative to a two-dimensional plane the distor- 
tion of the paper will be just as disconcerting as Einstein’s baffling 
notion of the warping of space is to us, 





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RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL REALITIES 285 


as told by the imperishable fossil records from 
preceding ages, makes the fundamental truth of 
evolution an irresistible conclusion. But the pre- 
cise methods by which the Almighty has carried out 
this cosmic process are still uncertain. They are 
relative to human fallibility and to a multitude of 
shifting factors. 

Applying this doctrine of relativity to the inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures, we see at once that 
belief in the literal truth of many of their state- 
ments is not an essential article of religious faith. 
The mold in which this literature was cast was 
warped by human view-points. Its ideas were rela- 
tive to the age in which it was produced. Often 
sublime, vehicles of transcendent spiritual truths 
which have outridden every storm of strife and 
passion, these ancient categories of human expres- 
sion are found to be out of harmony with the larger 
horizons and deeper insights of a later age. The 
fundamental truths which they convey are as vital 
as ever, but the outgrown husks in which they were 
enshrouded have become ‘‘as the chaff which the 
wind driveth away.’’ No better example of the 
relativity of religious view-points can be found than 
that disclosed in the evolution of the idea of God, 
discussed elsewhere in these pages. The various 
stages of this evolution reflect the characteristic 
modes of thought and the changing degrees of 
moral and spiritual insight of their respective 
times. The Story of Creation, wholly relative to the 
age of scientific ignorance and superstition in 
which it was formulated, has now become obsolete. 


286 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


We are at liberty to retain the fundamental spir- 
itual truth of the divine order of the universe and 
reject the ancient form in which it was stated. We 
may hold fast to the ‘‘spirit’’ of religious teachings, 
and at the same time disregard the ‘‘letter,’’ which 
‘‘killeth.’?? That is the gospel of science and the 
message of the doctrine of relativity as applied to 
the Scriptures. In the light of this new vision, old 
truths become more real, mental horizons broaden, 
and spiritual realities emerge, transfigured with a 
larger and truer meaning. 

If the message of Hinstein had done nothing 
more than to free the mind from its moorings to 
the fossilized forms of traditional thought, it would 
be an achievement of immense significance. That 
his ideas have also found a large measure of scien- 
tific confirmation demonstrates once more that the 
mental processes of a great thinker find their coun- 
terpart in the thought of Him whose life ensouls the 
universe. No better proof of the spirituality of all 
creation need be given. This latest voice of the 
masters of science speaks of truths as everlasting 
as those conveyed in the utterances of seer and 
prophet. 


CHAPTER XIII 
Tue FairHs oF THE SCIENTISTS 


Wuar have been the religious faiths of the out- 
standing scientists of the world, past and present? 
Is it possible for a man to devote his life to the 
pursuit of physical knowledge and be a Christian 
still? Is a larger understanding of the eternal 
truths of God’s universe incompatible with His wor- 
ship? Did God intend that ignorance of His cre- 
ation should be a chief qualification for His service? 
Need we fear that a larger understanding of the 
revelations of the Divine Immanence will place in 
jeopardy the spiritual welfare of the race? Must 
we cease our inquiry into the ways and laws of 
Nature and regard knowledge as a static thing, a 
stranger to progress and growth? Are the super- 
stitious imaginings of infant peoples to be placed 
above the revelations of the telescope, the spectro- 
scope and the microscope? Must we disregard 
utterly the plain story of the rocks? Are we to 
believe that God would implant in the soul of man 
this insatiable thirst for knowledge and then con- 
demn him for his legitimate efforts to gratify it? 
Is there not something wrong with a conception of 
God which is susceptible of such an interpretation? 
And is it true that the brightest stars in the firma- 

287 


288 - THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


ment of scientific achievement are symbols of 
agnosticism and atheism? A brief review of this 
field will serve to clarify certain widespread mis- 
conceptions. 

Modern science began with Copernicus and Gali- 
leo, both devout believers in the divinity of man and 
in the spiritual truth of the Scriptures. Even the 
narrow-visioned persecution of the Church could 
not shake Galileo’s faith in God. This prophet of 
a new age, who with the sweep of his telescope 
across the heavens brought to ruin the celestial 
spheres of the ancients and the Scriptural astron- 
omy of the early church, could see nothing incon- 
sistent with such astounding revelations and a 
theistic conception of the universe. And let us re- 
member that the new knowledge unfolded by this 
astronomer of the Florentine hills was, in that time 
of crudity, much more startling in its religious 
signification than are the present-day teachings of 
sclence regarding evolution and miracles. In that 
age of the extreme literal interpretation of the 
Scriptures, the voice of Galileo was as one erying 
in the wilderness, and yet it was the voice of one 
of the most enlightened seers of any time. 

In the very year of Galileo’s death Sir Isaac 
Newton was born. To him it was given to carry 
forward the work of the great Italian and to estab- 
lish the new heavens upon the bed-rock of absolute 
law. Still, in the view of this intellectual giant, the 
reign of celestial law did not encroach upon the 
prerogatives of God. Although he was denounced 
as an enemy of the Deity, no more sincere Christian 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 289 


ever lived than this British physicist who first ex- 
plained the motions of the planets and _ their 
satellites and immeasurably broadened men’s con- 
ception of this vast universe, of which our solar 
system is but a tiny fragment. If new and revolu- 
tionary truth regarding the heavenly bodies did not 
disturb the serene religious faith of one of the most 
gifted thinkers of any age, why should an increase 
in our knowledge of Nature precipitate spiritual 
unrest and turmoil in the minds of any to-day? The 
memory of Sir Isaac Newton, shining like a beacon 
light across the intervening centuries, should be a 
source of strength and inspiration to any who are 
now meeting with obstacles in the form of ignorance 
and stagnant thought similar to those which he en- 
countered nearly three hundred years ago. 

Among that little group of early workers in the 
field of modern chemistry, was Joseph Priestley, 
co-discoveror with Scheele of oxygen. Both were 
devout men, and Priestley was a clergyman. This 
new world of chemical knowledge, utterly antagon- 
istic, as it was to alchemy and its mystical 
implications, was not regarded as opposed to the 
spiritual teachings of Scripture. Because men in 
Bible times had gained no inkling of atomic mys- 
teries and did not find in sacred literature a chemi- 
eal theology, the apostles of scientific research in 
this field have been relatively freer from the perse- 
cutions of ecclesiastical dogmatists. 

Among the naturalists of a century ago, the 
most distinguished was Baron de Cuvier, the 
founder of comparative anatomy. A man of intense 


290 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


religious convictions, he could not bring himself 
to accept the doctrines of evolution, as advanced 
by Lamarck, and yet he clearly recognized that 
there have been successive geological epochs in the 
development of the animal life upon the earth. The 
work of the great Frenchman upon extinct species 
of animals paved the way for later views, and he 
himself held to a doctrine of special creation to- 
tally at variance with the orthodox teachings of 
Scripture. According to his theory, great catastro- 
phic upheavals at intervals of the geologic past 
destroyed the animal life upon the earth and re- 
newed acts of special creation in each instance 
replaced it with other species. His investigations, 
however, showed him that the life now present upon 
the globe differs radically from that of preceding 
ages, a view quite contrary to that of Scripture. 
And yet, this anatomist who could reconstruct the 
complete skeleton of an extinct mammoth from a 
single bone, did not reject the spiritual truths of 
the Bible nor see any essential lack of harmony be- 
tween his own views and those of Genesis. And the 
religious zeal of Cuvier was typical of that of other 
noted scientists of his time. 

Lamarck, the distinguished predecessor of Dar- 
win and the founder of the first comprehensive 
theory of organic evolution, could assert with per- 
fect Christian faith, ‘‘Surely nothing exists except 
by the will of the Sublime Author of all things.’’ 
Kiven Darwin could not bring himself to reject the 
thought of immortality. It is true that Huxley, 
the great popularizer of evolutionary doctrines of 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 991 


a half-century ago, coined the word ‘‘agnosticism’’ 
to express his own nebulous views of God and im- 
mortality. He neither affirmed nor denied. But 
Huxley lived and worked in the heyday of material- 
istic tendencies which swept the earth during the 
second half of the last century. His views were a 
product of his times. And so were those of Ernest 
Haeckel, the foremost exponent of a thorough- 
eoing mechanistic naturalism. It is heartening to 
know that Alfred Russell Wallace, independent and 
simultaneous formulator with Darwin of the theory 
of natural selection and a distinguished scholar in 
the fields of biological, physical, astronomical and 
geological science, rejected the mechanistic inter- 
pretation of the world, He did not regard life and 
man as mere accidents. Mund, in his view, was the 
flower of creation, for the realization of which even 
the stars in the heavens exist. 

Of the great naturalists of the last century, no 
one would dissent from placing Louis Agassiz in 
the very forefront. His whole life from earliest 
boyhood is the story of a passionate devotion to 
the study of Nature. It is interesting to know that, 
starting as an atheist, his broad scientific re- 
searches led him step by step to a fervent belief in 
a divine purpose and order everywhere in the uni- 
verse. His very humanity, however, his kindred 
feeling for every living thing, would not permit him 
to accept the Darwinian theory of evolution, al- 
though his students were early converts, and, had 
Agassiz lived a decade longer, there is little reason 
to suppose that his keen mind could have with- 


292 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


stood the weight of evidence, The significant thing 
to observe is that the pursuit of science led him to, 
not away from, God. 

Among the physicists of the first half of the last 
century, Michael Faraday easily stands first, His 
researches in the field of electromagnetism alone 
will rank him as one of the greatest scientific dis- 
coverers of all time. And yet, with all his deep 
insight into the mysteries of physical science, his 
was one of the most gentle and Christlike charac- 
ters to be found in the pages of history. To the 
end of his long and useful life, he preserved a 
simple faith in God and in the eternal verities of 
the Christian religion. Of a little later period were 
Lord Kelvin and James Clerk-Maxwell, whose 
names will long remain as symbols of intellectual 
leadership. In his address as president of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science 
at its forty-first annual session, Lord Kelvin said: 
‘“‘Overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligence and 
benevolent design lie all about us; and if ever per- 
plexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn 
us away from them for a time, they come back upen 
us with irresistible force, showing us through na- 
ture the influence of a free will and teaching ua 
that all living beings depend on one ever-acting 
Creator and Ruler.’’? And again he wrote: ‘‘I be- 
lieve that the more thoroughly science is studied 
the further does it take us from anything compar- 
able to atheism.’’ Still, this eminent British 
physicist was the author of theories concerning the 
age of the earth and a staunch believer in others 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 293 


which totally discredit a belief in the scientific ac- 
curacy of the first chapters of Genesis. Maxwell, 
who demonstrated the electromagnetic nature of 
light and was a mathematical scientist second only 
to Newton, said: ‘‘I have looked into most philos- 
ophical systems, and I have seen that none will 
work without God.’’ Oersted and Ohm, important 
discoverers in the field of electricity and life-long 
students of physical science, expressed their deep 
convictions in the theistic origin and nature of the 
world. 

Immanuel Kant, one of the most profound 
thinkers of any time and the anticipator of the 
Nebular Hypothesis of Laplace, was a firm believer 
in God. It was this great philosopher who said: 
“Two things fill me with unspeakable awe,—the 
starry heavens above and the moral law within.’’ 
John Dalton, the father of the atomic theory of the 
elements, was of simple Quaker faith. Schwann, 
the founder of the cell theory of organic structure, 
Claude Bernard, a pioneer in modern physiology, 
and Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, could 
see nothing inconsistent with the pursuit of science 
and the integrity of religious faith. Sir Charles 
Lyell, the first great geologist and an early con- 
vert to the theory of evolution, was a devout 
Christian to the end of his days. James Dwight 
Dana, foremost among early American geologists, 
after resisting the truth of the Darwinian view for 
many years, became an enthusiastic supporter of 
it, and this without interference with his Christian 
faith. Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, who made 


294 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


discoveries of farreaching significance concerning 
the laws of heredity and who founded the science 
of genetics, did not allow his scientific pursuits to 
disturb his religious beliefs. 

If ever there was a modern apostle of light, a 
great scientist and Christian explorer of God’s 
universe of truth, that man was Louis Pasteur, the 
father of the germ theory of disease and repeatedly 
chosen by the populace of France as the most illus- 
trious of all Frenchmen. No more worthy testi- 
mony to his deep religious conviction can be found 
than that contained in his own words, carved over 
his tomb: ‘‘Happy is he who carries a God within 
him, an ideal of beauty to which he is obedient—an 
ideal of art, an ideal of science, an ideal of the 
fatherland, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel.’’ 

Sir William Perkin, discoverer of the first coal- 

tar dye and distinguished chemist, in a review of his 
life shortly before his death in 1907, said: ‘‘ . . 
1 thank God, to whom I owe a for all His 
goodness to me, and ascribe to Him all the praise 
and honor.’’ Benne Harrow, in his biographi- 
cal sketch of this man, who opened up a new con- 
tinent of unexplored chemical wealth, paid to him 
the following tribute: ‘‘A blameless Christian, a 
perfect gentleman, a fine type of the old conserva- 
tive, he lived unobtrusively, worked quietly and 
intensively, worshiped God, and respected his 
neighbor.’’ 

Of the British scientists of our own time, no 
more illustrious trio could be named than Lord 
Rayleigh, Sir William Crookes, and Sir Oliver 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 295 


Lodge. It is difficult now to know whether Sir 
Oliver Lodge will be remembered in the years to 
come chiefly for his large contributions to physical 
science, particularly in the fields of radioactivity 
and atomic structure, or for his researches in the 
realm of psychic phenomena and for his efforts to 
establish the truth of immortality. Sir William 
Crookes, who first introduced the scientific world to 
a knowledge of electric discharges in high vacua 
and paved the way for a veritable Niagara of 
hitherto undreamed-of discovery, was also a psy- 
chic investigator and a staunch supporter of the 
spiritualistic conception of the universe. Lord 
Rayleigh, under whose direction Sir Wiliam Ram- 
say made his classic investigation of the rare gases 
of the atmosphere, was a devout follower of re- 
ligion. | 

Turning to the men of science in our own 
country to-day, we can cite no more distinguished 
figure than that of Robert A. Millikan, winner of 
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923. Not long ago, 
he said: ‘‘Kivery one who reflects believes in one 
way or another in God.’’ To him, it is ‘‘as obvious 
as breathing that every man who is sufficiently in 
his senses to recognize his own inability to compre- 
hend the problem of existence, to understand 
whence he himself came and whither he is going 
must in the very admission of that ignorance and 
finiteness recognize the existence of a Something, 
a Power, a Being in whom and because of whom he 
himself lives and moves and has his being.”’ 

Doctor Millikan has also made a real contribu- 


296 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


tion to the contemporary discussion of this subject 
by showing in his paper on ‘‘Science and Religion’? 
that many of America’s foremost scientists are 
earnest Christians. Among those he names are: 
Doctor Charles D. Wallcot, head of the Smithson- 
ian Institution in Washington; Henry Fairfield 
Osborn, director of the Natural History Museum 
of New York and one of the foremost biologists and 
experts on primitive man in the world; Edwin G, 
Conklin, distinguished evolutionist of Princeton; 
John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Insti- 
tution and our country’s foremost paleontologist; 
Michael Pupin, whose book From Immigrant to 
Inventor has made him known to a host of 
readers; John Coulter, chief among American 
botanists; the eminent chemists A. A. and W. A. 
Noyes; James A. Breasted, leading archeologist 
of America; and C. G. Abbott, home secretary of 
the National Academy of Sciences and distin- 
guished astronomer. 

In 1923 a statement regarding the relation of 
science to Christian faith was formulated and 
signed by thirty-five prominent Americans, includ- 
ing fifteen scientists, Its concluding sentence 
reads as follows: ‘‘It is a sublime conception of 
God which is furnished by science, and one wholly 
consonant with the highest ideals of religion, when 
if represents Him as revealing Himself through in- 
breathing of life into its constituent matter, 
culminating in man with his spiritual nature and 
all his Godlike powers.”’ 

Doctor Henry F. Osborn, in his little book, Evo- 


4 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 297 


lution and Religion, says, ‘‘The moral principle 
inherent in evolution is that nothing can be gained 
in this world without effort; the ethical principle 
inherent in evolution is that the best only has the 
right to survive; the spiritual principle in evolution 
is the evidence of beauty, of order, and of design in 
the daily myriad of miracles to which we owe our ex- 
istence.’’ It is of the utmost significance, too, 
that Doctor Osborn, whose life has been devoted 
to the scientific aspects of life and Nature, should 
say, ‘‘ . . . purpose pervades all Nature, from 
nebula to man. Herbert Spencer may call it the 
Unknowable; the naturalist with Wordsworth may 
eall it Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe.”’ 

Professor Edward L. Rice, of Ohio Wesleyan 
University, in his address before the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, in De- 
cember, 1924, said: ‘‘ .. . an increasing number 
of our leading scientists are publicly proclaiming 
their own theistic philosophy, and emphasizing 
anew the essential harmony of a progressive scien- 
tific belief with real religion. J rejoice in the public 
utterances of such men as Conklin, Coulter, Millikan 
and Osborn. May their tribe increase! And may 
their efforts combine with the increasing popular 
interest in science toward the bringing in of the day 
when a more scientific religion and a more religious 
science shall join in a common welcome to truth, 
whether revealed in Nature, in human life, or in the 
Bible, and shall present an unbroken front in the 
struggle for the higher evolution of the human 
race.’? *: 


*Science, March 6, 1925. 


298 THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Doctor J. B. S. Haldane, eminent British scien- 
tist of the present day and author of Daedalus, 
states his belief in the spirituality of the universe in 
the following words: ‘‘God is with us, in us, and 
everywhere around us, as Jesus taught.’’ No one 
ean read the works of Doctor J. A. Thomson, the 
author of The Outline of Science, without knowing 
how deep are his convictions of the theistic origin 
and nature of the universe. | 

Professor Theodore W. Richards of Harvard, 
America’s foremost chemist, has indicated his faith 
in the spiritual nature of life in the following lines 
taken from a Phi Beta Kappa address delivered by 
him at Cambridge in 1916: ‘‘There is, in truth, no 
conflict between the ideals of science and other high 
ideals of human life. With deep insight, a poetic 
thinker on life’s problems, in the opening lines of a 
sonnet, has said: 


Fear not to go where fearless Science leads, 
Who holds the keys of God. What reigning light 
Thine eyes discern in that surrounding night 
Whence we have comesiei) (oie eae aie te 
Thy soul will never find that Wrong is Right.’’ 


No, the pursuit of science does not destroy faith 
in God and religion and in the noble ideals of life. 
That some scientists are disbelievers, or agnostics, 
is no more significant than that many theologians 
have shut their minds against the revelations of 
scientific truth, A man may follow the path of 
truth wherever it may lead with the perfect assur- 
ance that he will find God at the journey’s end. 


THE FAITHS OF THE SCIENTISTS 299 


Whatever unbelief may prevail to-day, whether it 
be religious or scientific, we may be perfectly sure 
that, somewhere, sometime, all will understand and 
that scientist and Christian prophet may unite in 
one purpose and a common faith, 


THE END 


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INDEX 


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ya) } 





INDEX 


Abbott, C. G., 296 

Abbott, Lyman, 58, 116 

Abraham, 154 

Acquired characters, 69, 81 

Adam, 46, 161, 175 

Adams, 254 

African man-like ape, 130 

Agassiz, 291 

Age, Bronze, 142 

Age, First Glacial, 128 

Age of earth, 26 

Age of metals, 123 

Age, Polished Stone, 141 

Age, Rough Stone, 125, 137 

Ages, Ice, 120, 125, 137 

Ages, Metal, 123, 141 

Airplane, 218, 248 

Albert the Great, 39, 221 

Alchemists, 238 

Alchemy, 240 

American Museum of Natural 
History, 106 

Amos, 224 

Anatomy, comparative, 98, 126 

Anaxagoras, 251 

Ancestor worship, 171, 173 

Andromeda, 15 

Angels, 41, 50 

Antiquity of man, 29, 124, 131 

Ape, 55, 103, 126, 129 

Archean Age, 25 

Archeology, 121, 156, 162 

Archeopteryx, 105 

Argentina, 73 


Aristarchus, 38 

Arkwright, 240 

Armistice Day, 244 

Arnold, Matthew, 150 

Arrhenius, 112 

Artificial breeding, 76 

Asshurbanipal, 157 

Assyria, 158, 165 

Atlantis, 23 

Atoms, 17, 32, 34, 53, 183, 263 

Augustine, St., 39, 40, 174, 177, 
206, 253 

Aurora Borealis, 15, 264 

Automobile, 218 


Bach, 204 

Bacon, Roger, 198 
Baly, 112 

Bateson, 87 
Beagle, 72, 76 
Bede, 39 
Beethoven, 204 
Bell, 244, 261 
Bergmann, 207 
Bernard, 293 
Berzelius, 261, 267 
Betelgeuse, 21 
Bible, 37, 147, 162 
Bison, 132, 133 
Black, 207 

Blood tests, 103, 126 
Bowne, 284 

Boyle, 207 
Brachiopods, 104 


303 


304 


Branches, animal, 93 
Breasted, 296 
Bronze Age, 142 
Bruno, 85 

Bunsen, 261, 273 
Burbank, 76, 97 


Cadman, 115 

Calvin, 45 

Camel, 106 

Canadian Geological Survey, 29 

Canidae, 94 

Canis, 94 

Carboniferous forests, 65 

Carlyle, 169 

Carnivora, 94 

Cartwright, 241 

Carty, 244 

Catastrophes, natural, 66 

Cave bear, 124 

Cave men, 139 

Cavendish, 207, 239, 261 

Celestial spheres, 41, 210 

Cenozoic Era, 106 

Chaldean civilization, 35, 158 

Chaldean legends, 41 

Chamberlain, 18 

Chance, 14, 30, 31, 80, 90, 18¢, 
240, 260 

Christ, 38, 169, 227-35 

Christian faith, 113, 126, 150, 
199, 208, 210, 287 

Church and science, 196, 205 

Church fathers, 37, 199 

Classification, animal, 93 

Clerk-Maxwell, 292 

Coal, 65 

Columbus, 40, 86, 194 

Comets, 17, 38, 208, 258 

Comparative anatomy, 98, 126 

Comte, 54, 258 


INDEX 


Conklin, 296 

Conservation of energy, 191, 284 

Copernican theory, 43, 47, 68 

Copernicus, 38, 45, 48, 56, 200, 
208, 238, 250, 288 

Corners of the earth, 37 

Coulter, 296, 297 

Cro-Magnon man, 138, 146 

Crompton, 241 

Crookes, 190, 246, 294 

Crookes’ tube, 269 

Crustaceans, 104 

Crystalline spheres, 50 

Curie, Madame, 247, 261 

Cuvier, 66, 69, 184, 289 


Dalton, 61, 267, 293 

Dana, 293 

Dante, 39, 42 

Dart, 130 

Darwin, Charles, Ch. III, 192, 
209, 236, 290 

Darwin, Erasmus, 61 

Darwinian view to-day, 87 

David, 225 

Da Vinci, 61. 

Davy, 240 

Dawn man, 134 

Dead, the, 186 

Deluge, 67, 156, 159 

Democritus, 61, 267 

Descartes, 208, 238 

Descent of man, 127 

De Vries, 90 

Dogs, 94, 96 

Domestication, 96 

Doors of heaven, 37 

Duncan, 268, 273 

Dynasties, Egyptian, 121 


Egyptian civilization, 35, 121, 
155 


INDEX 305 
Finstein, 20, 248, 276 Genera, 93 
Electricity, 189, 239 Geographical distribution of ani- 


Electrons, 17, 32, 34, 53, 246, 263 

Elephant, 106, 133 

Elijah, 224, 225 

Blisha, 224, 225 

Elisworth, 29 

Embryology, 99 

Emerson, 169, 236 

Empyrean, 42 

Eohippus, 106 

Eoliths, 128 

Ether, 32, 86, 189, 242 

Eve, 161, 175 

Evidences of evolution, 93 

Evolution, 17, 21, 31, 52, 202, 
209, 258 

Extinct species, 63, 66 

Ezekiel, 224 


Families, 93 

Faraday, 198, 236, 240, 261, 292 
Fire mist, 13, 52, 192 
Firmament, 36 

First law of motion, 251 

Fiske, 170 

Fissipedia, 94 

Forum, 53, 55, 140 

Fosdick, 203, 212 

Fossils, 62 

Fourth dimension, 277 

Franklin, 56, 233, 261 

Fruit of the Family Tree, 70 
Fulton, 261 

Fundamentalists, 54, 55, 85, 143 


Galapagos Islands, 73, 108 

Galileo, 42, 44, 56, 83, 86, 163, 
198, 200, 208, 217, 222, 236, 
238, 250, 286 

Garden of Eden, 96, 158, 161 


mals, 108 
Geography, 41, 86 
Geologie story, 22 
Germplasm, 81, 91 
Ghosts, 171, 186 
Gill slits, 100 
Giraffe, 70 
Glacial Age, First, 128 
God, 168, 176 
Goethe, 61 
Gospels, 228, 230 
Gray, 84 
Greek idea of God, 173 
Grimaldi race, 139 
Gruner, 25 


Haeckel, 84, 97, 259, 291 
Haldane, 58, 297 
Halley, 253 

Handel, 204 

Harding, 244 
Hargreaves, 240 
Harvey, 56, 258 

Heat, 189 

Heat of sun, 27 
Heidelberg man, 133 
Helium, 29, 271, 272 
Helmholtz, 28, 112, 245 
Heredity, 77, 80, 88 
Herschel, 254 

Hertz, 245, 261 

Higher criticism, 166 
Hilare, St., 61 

Hillis, 53, 55, 117 
Hippopotamus, 124, 132, 134 
History of evolution, 60 
Holmes, 119 

Hominidx, 127 

Homo, 127, 129 


306 


Hooker, 84 

Horse, 106, 132, 133 

Hosea, 225 

Hrdlieka, 130 

Huxley, 84, 106, 136, 179, 290 
Huyghens, 238 

Hyena, 124 


Ice ages, 120, 125, 137 
Immortality, 19, 185, 187, 284 
Inge, Dean, 200 
Inquisition, 44, 47 
Insectivora, 129 
Insects, 104 
Inspiration, 162-66 
Isaiah, 37, 229 


& 


Java, 109, 131 
Java man, 131 
Jefferson, 57, 114 
Jehovah, 154, 159, 172 
Jenner, 241, 293 
Jeremiah, 224 
Jericho, 225 
Jesuits, 46 

Jesus, 172, 227-32 
John, St., 228-30 
Jordan, 225 
Joshua, 225 
Jupiter, 43 


Kant, 170, 293 

Keith, 131, 134 

Kellogg, 58 

Kelvin, 28, 112, 261, 292 
Kepler, 48, 181, 208, 238, 250 
Kepler’s laws, 48, 49, 253 
Kirchoff, 273 

Knudson, 164, 165 

Krakatoa, 109 


INDEX 


Lamarck, 56, 69, 81, 95, 290 
Lane, 28 

Laplace, 16, 18, 170, 293 
Lavoisier, 207, 240, 261 


Law of gravitation, 16, 30, 48, 


86, 222 
Le Conte, 98 
Legend, 34 
Legends of Genesis, 153 
Leibnitz, 252 
Leverrier, 184, 254 
Life, mystery of, 111 
Light, 189 
Lincoln, 72, 165, 198, 236 
Linneus, 175 
Lion, 133 
Lister, 243 
Lockyer, 29, 274 
Locomotive, 218 
Lodge, 181, 257, 273, 279, 295 
Lot, 225 
Lucifer, 42 
Luke, St., 227, 229, 230 
Lupus, 94 
Luther, 38, 44, 198 
Lyell, 26, 67, 84, 208, 293 
Lyra, 15 


Magellan, 40, 86 

Malthus, 77 

Mammals, 94, 106, 108, 127 
Mammoth, 66, 106, 124, 132 
Man, rise of, 120 

Man’s ancestry, 126 
Man’s divinity, 145 
Marconi, 245 

Mark, St., 227, 229, 230 
Marsh, 107 

Master Mind, 14, 75 
Mathews, Shailer, 211 
Matthew, St., 227, 229, 230 


INDEX 


Melanchthon, 38, 45 
Mendel, 92, 293 
Mendeléeff, 261, 268 
Menes, 121 

Merriam, 296 

Mesozoic era, 105 

Metal Ages, 123, 141 
Meteoric matter, 17, 18, 112 
Meteors, 28 

Meyer, Lothar, 268 
Michelangelo, 204 
Michelson, 279 
Microscope, 237, 287 
Middle Ages, 85, 151, 175, 198 
Milky Way, 34, 44, 53 
Millikan, 265, 295, 297 
Milton, 236 

Miracles, 178, 216, 258 
Miracles, modern, 236 
Miracles of healing, 235 
Missing link, 131 
Modernists, 54 

Molecules, 17, 34, 53, 183, 263 
Mollusks, 104 

Monkey, 55, 103, 126, 129 
Morley, 279 

Morse, 243 

Morton, 242 

Moseley, 271 

Moulton, 18 

Mountains, 23 

Mutations, 91 

Music of the spheres, 42 
Myths, 34 


National Research Council, 28 

Natural law, 250 

Natural selection, 77, 79, 82, 88, 
89 

Nature worship, 172, 173 

Neanderthal man, 135, 146 


307 


Nebula, 13, 53, 192 

Nebular Hypothesis, 16, 21, 163, 
261, 293 

Neptune, 254 

New Testament, 169, 206, 226 

Newton, 17, 48, 56, 85, 198, 208, 
222, 236, 238, 251, 282, 288 

Noah’s ark, 46 

Noyes, A. A., 296 

Noyes, W. A., 296 


Oersted, 293 

Ohm, 293 

Old Testament, 40, 148, 151, 153, 
212, 226 

Optic tube, 42 

Orders, 93 

Origen, 211 

Origin of Species, 75, 81, 177 

Orion, 15 

Osborn, 139, 296, 297 

Outlook, 58, 200 


Paleontology, 104 

Paleozoic era, 105 

Pasteur, 236, 243, 294 
Pentateuch, 155 

Periodic law, 268 

Perkin, 294 

Perpetual motion, 14, 88 
Persian civilization, 35 
Phyla, 93 

Pigeons, 97 

Pillars of heaven, 37 
Piltdown man, 134 

Planet, 13, 266 
Planetesimal Hypothesis, 18, 22 
Polished Stone Age, 141 
Pope Gregory VII, 206 
Porto Santo rabbits, 97 
Priestley, 207, 239, 261, 289 


008 


Primates, 127, 128 
Pterodactyls, 105 
Ptolemaic theory, 41 
Pupin, 296 


Radioactivity, 28, 189 
Radium, 29, 189, 246, 271, 272 
Rawlinson, 157 

Rayleigh, 294 

Reformation, 38, 45 
Reindeer, 124 

Relativity, 276 x 
Renaissance, 198 

Reptiles, 105 

Resurrection, 230-32 
Rhinoceros, 106, 124, 132-34 
Rhodesian man, 135 

Rice, E. L., 297 

Rice, John A., 162 

Richards, 268, 298 

Rontgen, 246, 261 

Rough Stone Age, 125, 137 
Royal Institution, 240 


Saber-toothed tiger, 124 


St. 


St. 
St. 
St. 
St. 
St. 
St. 
St. 


Augustine, 39, 40, 174, 177, 
206, 253 

Hilaire, 61 

John, 228-230 

Luke, 227-229 

Mark, 227-230 

Matthew, 227-230 

Paul, 172, 227, 230 

Thomas Aquinas, 39, 206 


Scheele, 207, 239, 261, 289 
Schwann, 293 

Science and the church, 196 
Science and immortality, 187 
Science, message of, 166 
Science and miracles, 233 
Science and the Scriptures, 166 
Scientists and faith, 287 


INDEX 


Scorpions, 104 

Scott, 78, 91 

Sea-lilies, 104 

Serum tests, 103 

Shakespeare, 59, 198, 236 

Sheol, 187 

Signs and wonders, 38, 50, 202 

Smith, George, 157 

Smith, William, 62 

Smyth, 148 

Society of Jesus, 219 

Solar energy, 27 

Solar system, 13, 17, 30, 44, 192 

Space, 20, 277 

Special creation, 66, 68, 77, 94, 
96, 102, 110 

Species, 73, 74, 87, 93, 94, 97 

Spectroseope, 15, 273, 287 

Spectroscopic analysis, 18, 29, 
237 

Spencer, 84, 169, 181, 271 

Spiders, 104 

Spiritual realities, 276-83 

Stars, 19 

Steam engine, 239 

Stephenson, 261 

Stone ages, 123 

Story of Creation, 39, 67, 71, 
107, 152, 202, 210, 285 

Struggle for existence, 77, 78, 88 

Sub-orders, 93 

Suns, 15, 21 

Sunspots, 43 

Survival of fhe fittest, 77, 79, 89 


Tablets of Creation, 157 
Tablets of Deluge, 157 
Telegraph, 194, 244 
Telephone, 194, 243 
Telescope, 14, 43, 237, 287 
Temple, Bishop, 84 


INDEX 


Tennyson, 91, 236, 247 
Thomson, J. A., 298 

Thomson, J. J., 246, 269 
Thunderbolts, 38, 208, 258, 261 
Tower of Babel, 158 
Trilobites, 104 


Unknown Soldier, 244 
Uranium, 272 
Uranus, 254 


Vail, 244 

Variability, 77 

Venus, 43 

Vertebrata, 94 

Vestigial structures, 101, 126 
Virgin birth, 228 


Walcott, 25, 296 

Wallace, 77, 291 

Waters above the heavens, 36, 
37, 50 

Waitt, 239, 261 


309 


Watson, 244 

Weismann, 81 

Whales, 99 

Wheat, 52, 97 

White, 219 

Whittier, 118 

Wiggam, 70 

Windows of heaven, 37, 50 

Wireless telegraphy, 245 

Witcheraft, 208 

Wolf, 93, 96 

Wordsworth, 169, 185 

Worlds, 13, 19 

Worlé’s Work, 58 

Wrights, 248, 261 

Wyoming Geological and Histori- 
cal Society, 64 


X-ray, 189, 246, 269 
Xavier, 219, 225 


 Zwinglhi, 38 


Zodiacal light, 264 


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